#204 Larry Vickers - Delta Force: Operation Acid Gambit

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Larry Vickers, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you, brother.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate you being here.

Oh, I

couldn't be happier to be here.

This is a legendary interview.

Well, thanks for saying that.

You're welcome.

I'm humble, bro.

Yeah, you know,

I remember...

I remember getting connected to Tom Satterly texted me and was like, hey, do you want to interview Larry Vickers?

And I was like, fuck yes, I want to interview Larry Vickers.

So, yeah, fast forward, what, maybe six months?

And here we are.

So I'm really excited, man.

Thanks, bro.

I'm too.

I've been stoked about this for weeks now.

Good.

Yeah, big time.

Good.

Well, we're going to do a life story on you.

Childhood,

Army career.

what happened afterwards, some of the mix-ups that you're dealing with right now.

But everybody starts off with an introduction.

So here we go.

Larry Vickers, retired U.S.

Army first SFOD Delta operator, spending 15 years in the unit with over 20 years total in special operations, making you one of the most seasoned warriors of your era.

Stormed Modelo Prison in Panama during Operation Acid Gambit, rescuing Kurt Muse under heavy fire, earning a bronze star with valor for your actions.

Survived three helicopter crashes, more than any other operator at the time, and you walked away from every single one of those crashes.

You're the mastermind behind the HK-416, the rifle that took down Osama bin Laden, and a driving force in shaping modern tactical firearms and accessories.

Founder of Vickers Tactical and author of the Vickers Guide, Setting the Standard for Firearms Scholarship.

And there's a lot more.

We had to

cut it down just a little bit because we'll get into all the other stuff

in the interview.

And then before we start,

everybody gets a gift.

Even you, Larry.

I heard that.

So those are legal in all 50 states still

until they ban dyes and all the other shit.

But it's just Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears, man, made in the USA.

They taste amazing.

Yeah.

They're horrible for you.

But I love them.

Yeah, I heard about this.

Everybody told me, hey, you're going to get a gift.

Yeah, man.

Everybody gets a gift.

Cool.

It doesn't beat yours, though.

The Vickers Guide Heckler.

Yeah.

The HK.

Yeah, Volume 3.

That is awesome.

Actually, Volume 2, excuse me.

Volume 2.

Yeah.

The MP, the submachine gun book.

What's Volume 3?

Roller Lock guns, meaning G3

and, you know, like the HK21 series.

And then volume 4 is coming out this year, which is all the post-roller lock guns at 416, G36, 417, G11, XM8, all that stuff.

That's the one I'm really stoked about because of my time with the 416, being involved with that particular gun.

Cool.

Really stoked about that one.

It's coming out later this year.

What's your, I mean,

you've been around firearms for a long time.

You're an innovator.

I mean,

any firearm in the world,

what's your favorite?

The M4.

The M4?

M4-ish.

You know what I mean?

Semi-automatic, different barrel lengths, just kind of throw them all in the M4 bucket.

That would be my favorite.

Gotcha.

Because I have so much time with it.

And I put the 416 in with that too, because it's basically an M4 with a different operating system.

That's all it is.

I love the 416.

Thank you.

Please do use those.

No, thank you.

But,

well, let's get into the interview.

Okay.

So we always start a childhood.

Where'd you grow up?

Ohio, a real small town in Ohio called Adams Mills.

We don't even have a traffic light.

I mean, we're talking about small.

Nice.

Born in 1963, classic baby boomer.

I was a baby boomer by one year.

1964 is the last year of baby boomers.

So I was a baby boomer by one year.

Both my parents were involved in World War II.

My dad was a World War II vet in North Africa and Italy.

My mom worked on the home front making artillery shells.

Oh, no kidding.

Yeah, at a

munitions factory making artillery shells.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, you know, I kind of grew up from that and then

that mindset.

And the great thing about it was

you had maximum freedom.

Like I would take off at the beginning of the day, you know, the classic deal you've heard about, take off at the beginning of the day.

They wouldn't see me till, you know, time for dinner.

You're gone.

You're out in the woods.

You're taking a BB gun.

As I got older, I'd take a bold action 22, single shot, 22.

I'm hunting, you know, rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs.

And my parents, they'd have no idea where I'm at.

They know I'm around and whatnot.

And another thing they would do is, hey, it's time to come home.

We haven't seen Larry.

So they'd start calling the neighbors.

You know what I mean?

Real small town.

They knew everybody.

They knew everybody's phone number.

Hey, have you seen Larry?

Hey, yeah, I saw him.

Hey, send him home.

Dinner's ready.

That kind of a thing.

And we'd be wanting, me and my friends, we'd wander miles away, miles away.

And my parents would have no idea where I was at.

And they were totally cool with it.

They never got bent out of shape about why were you down there?

Why did you go down by that bridge?

Why were you over on top of that hill?

They never got bent out of shape about it at all.

Maximum freedom.

Any brothers and sisters?

Yeah, I got a brother who's older and a sister who's older as well.

I was the baby of the bunch.

I used to think my parents, they tried one last chance to have another kid, found out that I was an accident.

You know, it wasn't planned at all.

I was an accident.

My dad was 50 when I was born.

My mom was 36.

Wow.

Yeah.

So they were basically, particularly, my dad is old enough to be my grandfather.

So he was 50 and my mom was 36 when I was born.

Wow.

Wow.

So you, what did what age did you start on the BB gun?

Oh, man.

If I had to guess, I'd say six no no no no that's that not six seven probably about eight ish nine ish eight yeah

man I got a son he's three and he's dying I'm wanting

him a baby gun no he doesn't have one yet I mean I'm airsoft or no he has a cork gun okay yeah you know what I'm talking about the old school you pull the PVC pipe yep yeah I'm trying to teach him weapon safety with that it just it's he's not having it.

He's not having it.

He's not dialed in yet?

No.

As he gets older and more mature, he'll get it.

So eight, you started hunting.

With BB guns, going around trying to shoot squirrels, stuff like that.

What was your relationship like with your parents?

Good.

You know,

much closer with my mom and my dad.

And I've told people this.

when they asked these kind of questions.

I don't ever remember.

I knew my dad loved me, but i don't ever remember him telling me that one time that hey larry i love you my nickname was jake by the way they both called me jake

still to this day i have no idea why but hey jake you know hey jake hey jake that was my nickname but i i don't ever remember my dad saying hey i love you jake i mean not one time i knew he did

and honestly now i'm pinned down i don't know if my mom ever said it either they just kind of yeah they just kind of came from that era where it was was kind of understood,

we're putting a roof over your head, we're putting food in your stomach, we're putting clothes on your back.

Of course we love you.

That's where my head's at and why they were probably thinking that way, to be honest with you.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Not nothing touchy-feel like it is today.

Yeah.

Nothing like that.

Yeah.

What,

what, why were you closer with your mom than your dad?

Because she kind of babied me.

You know what I mean?

I just, I was just, she did you know and the old classic thing i had my mom kind of wrapped around my finger if i needed something i'd go to her and she would always give in and oh yeah so i you know i was a mama's boy gotcha got it gotcha what um i mean what else were you into as a kid how were you as a student good i was a classic b student

i could have been an a student with no problem but to me it was like I'll put in enough effort to be a B, you know, B student.

I really don't want to put in that extra effort to be an A.

If I got an A, it was almost by accident.

If I got a C, it was kind of because I was half-ass in it, to be honest with you.

But I was a classic B student.

I like to play sports with my friends.

Never really did organize sports very much at school.

But we would play baseball and football and all, and we'd play tackle football with no pads or any of that crap.

I did that all the way through, you know, elementary school, junior, junior high and high school.

We'd play tackle football with no pads.

To us, it was kind of flag football and all that was kind of like, seriously, why aren't you playing tackle football?

But say, I was into sports and whatnot, but from the point of view of playing with my friends, not necessarily organized sports at school.

Did your dad ever, or your mom, did they talk a lot about World War II?

My dad, a little bit.

My mom really never did at all.

It was only later I kind of asked her, so what'd you do?

She goes, oh, I worked at a factory, you know, in Coshocton, Ohio, which is where i was born um probably 15 20 miles up the road from where i grew up right and then she my mom is from there you know i worked in an art you know a manufacturing facility in coshocton that made artillery shells and i didn't find that out till late in the game you know and then my dad though would talk about it he was in north africa and italy and he had some ptsd really oh yeah he sure did How do you know?

Because he would, you know, he would kind of relate and start telling some stories about guys that had died and had been killed that he knew that were friends of his and stuff.

And I remember him talking about that on occasion.

Not a lot, but on occasion, he would kind of almost ramble in a way.

And I'd listen to him, but he would, yeah, he had PTSD for sure.

Absolutely.

Did you, when did your,

I guess, are your parents still with us?

Oh, no.

No, my dad died.

He was 84.

My mom was 77.

And that date, my God, they died in the early 90s.

Yeah,

they've been passed away for quite a while now.

Well, I guess the reason I'm asking is I'm just curious.

I mean, did you and your dad ever relate when you became

a Delta operator?

A little bit.

They

never, I mean, he knew about me going in the army, obviously.

I mean, I went in the army really because of my dad.

I mean, you know what I mean?

That influence.

I remember my dad one time specifically, I went in, and I went to jump school and all that.

And he said, Jake, he goes, Jake, I don't know, he never flew on an airplane in his whole life.

Wow.

His whole life, he never flew on an airplane.

Neither did my mom.

I mean, neither one of them flew on an airplane.

So that was totally

alien concept.

And for me to jump out of an airplane, my dad said, he goes, Jake, I don't know how you do that.

He goes, I don't know how you go.

That's something I just don't even know how you could do.

I remember him telling me that.

So he related to me going in the army,

but there were some things that I was doing that he just couldn't, you know, he couldn't comprehend.

Yeah.

Did your brother or sister go join the service at all?

My brother's actually on the autism spectrum pretty severe.

Okay.

My sister, she kind of got married early on.

She went on and did some occupational therapy stuff.

Neither one of them were really interested in going in the military at all.

I was really the only one that, you know, my son, my brother couldn't, I mean, because being on the spectrum, there's no way he could have been in the military.

My sister could have, but had no interest in it.

What, so it was your dad that got you interested in the military?

Yeah.

Solely your dad, or was there any other inspiration?

Mainly my dad, but you know, there were so many World War II vets in our little town.

Almost all the grown men were World War II vets.

I can't hardly think of any of them that weren't, that were my dad's age or kind of in that time frame.

They were all World War II vets.

And my uncle was World War II and Korea.

He'd served in both.

Bill Law, my uncle, was World War II and Korea.

So yeah, they were, that had an influence on me.

All those World War II vets, for sure, me playing Army, which was my favorite game, of course, of all time.

I was playing Army as a kid and getting helmets and stuff like that and going around with sticks.

You know,

sticks basically, you bent in the shape or you snapped in the shape of a gun.

But yeah, it was mainly my dad's influence in terms of that's really the number one reason I went in the military.

It was my dad's influence.

What about, I mean, the Vietnam War was going on at that time.

Did that have any influence?

Not really so much.

I was still too young for that.

Because, you know, Vietnam ended 70, early 70s.

I mean, I was born in 1963.

Yeah.

So when it's ending, I'm seven, eight years old.

So not really,

not really.

If I'd have been older, 100%.

100%.

How did you,

how did you pick the Army?

Why did you pick it?

My dad was in the Army.

So right off the bat, and you'll love this.

This is a great story.

I was telling Scott about this on the way up here.

My dad always spoke highly of the Rangers.

Always, he really held the Rangers in high esteem, put them on a pedestal.

So I thought, well, I'm going to go in in the Army and I'm going to be a Ranger.

Right?

Well, I went down to the Army Recruiter and I got a little pamphlet about combat arms.

And it, you know, had the first one was infantry and then artillery.

It had airborne in there and all that jazz.

And one Rangers.

Well, I know I'm reading about the Rangers.

That's where I'm going to go.

Well, I noticed there's one, this is no lie, one more page.

I'm like, hmm, I flip it open.

Special forces.

What's this?

I started reading about Special Forces.

And then, you know, at the very end, they had me.

I mean, I was hooked.

It said, if you don't think you can make it, don't even try because only the best can wear the green beret.

And that was it.

Dude, I was, I said, that's it.

I'm going to be a green beret.

I'm going to be special forces.

At that point,

their PR department worked on me.

I mean, it worked like a champ.

They wanted to snag somebody and they snagged me like a big dog.

100%.

What did,

so you could go straight into it back then?

At that time, yeah, they had what they called informally, we called it the SF Baby Program, and they needed bodies because this is post-Vietnam, they needed people.

So, yeah, you could go straight in off the street

as right out of high school and go through the Q course.

A matter of fact, I graduated and I was 18 years old from the Q course.

Yeah, I was for about, I graduated May 7th, 1982,

and I turned 19 June 27th, 1982.

Wow.

Yeah, I was a Green Beret for about a month and a half before I turned 19.

Holy shit.

Yeah, 18 years old.

Didn't know anything, dude.

I didn't know anything.

In hindsight, that SF baby program was stupid.

They didn't have it for very long.

I think they kind of realized this is dumb, and then they put parameters on it.

You had to be in the Army for a certain amount of time before you could try out for SF and all that kind of stuff, which made perfect sense.

Because I got, here I'm on an SF team.

I'm 19 years old.

I didn't know anything.

I mean, nothing.

You know, I'm curious about your thoughts on this because I think that, I think the, didn't the SF baby, I think it came back.

They did.

They call it

the X-ray program, but you have some pretty serious parameters that you got to meet.

I think you have to, now don't hold me to this.

I could be way off base.

But I think

one of the things that allows you to go straight in is like two years of college.

I think you have to be a certain age and whatnot.

But I think it's called the x-ray program.

So it did come back where I went as a G-WAT thing, I think.

They wanted people.

They needed people.

They wanted people.

So it was a G-WAT style effort that they brought in to get people in the special forces, the X-ray program.

As far as I know, it's still in effect.

Yeah,

well, when I joined, I mean, that's how I became a SIL because I originally wanted to be Force Recon.

They wouldn't take me.

Well, then Green Beret, my dad was in the Army.

They wouldn't, you couldn't do it.

You couldn't get in.

And then the Navy recruiter stuck his head out and was like, hey, you're the SEALs?

And I was like, no.

And they had the program.

They had the, I can't remember what the Buds Challenge program or something like that, SEAL challenge program.

But I remember being in.

And I got, I joined, signed up at 17, waited till I was 18, shipped out.

I did the same thing.

I did that sign up at 17 between junior and senior, you know, senior year, signed up at 17.

So I had that one year

where it still worked in my favor for pay, even though no rank.

But I did the same thing.

I signed up at 17.

Well,

I'm just curious about your thoughts because I still think about it.

I go back and forth.

And I remember the first time we worked with Green Berets with an SF team.

We were in Panama, and then we went out to Haiti in 2004 when Aristide got yanked out.

But I remember those guys just giving us all kinds of shit because we were so young.

And yes, we were, especially me,

a total immature fucking knucklehead.

But I was a hard charger.

And I always, like back then, I always thought it was dumb.

to make people go to

conventional units and then to come into special operations because

because I think that

what am I trying to say you know conventional units

they don't think like like soft guys

and sometimes you can get these guys in from a conventional unit especially in the navy yep

because there's nothing there's no sure there's nothing else like it right and they come in and they bring what we call that fleet mentality and they're very very chain of command very

it's not like an open forum like what special operations is supposed to be now on the flip side of that if you don't send them out there then you do get a bunch of immature fucking knuckleheads and that could be hard to

i can imagine that would be really hard to deal with but i'm i mean so do you you think that people should go to the

to a regular MOS before joining special ops?

Or getting the opportunity opportunity to try out for Special Ops?

Yes and no.

I tell you, if I'd had it to do over again, if I was going to do it now, I'd go to the Ranger Battalion first.

Really?

Yeah, 100%.

100%.

I found out once I got in,

that's really the route I should have went.

Why do you say that?

Just because where my head was at.

You know, SF, Green Berets, they're force multipliers, man.

They go overseas.

Let's face it.

They go overseas and take a bunch of people and train them basic training and try to organize them into a fighting unit.

I mean, that's really force multiplier, nation building.

That's their thing.

As soon as I found that out, I was like, dude, count me out.

I had no desire to do that at all.

No shit.

Oh, no.

You didn't think that was cool at all?

Not at all.

I had no desire.

I wanted to be a pipe hitter from day one, bro.

You just wanted to be an assault.

I wanted to be a pipe hitter.

And I knew in hindsight, that Ranger battalion path before I got in Delta was a better path for me.

I knew it.

Interesting.

Yeah.

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Because I wanted to be a pipe hitter.

I had no interest in this nation building thing, going to a third world country, training, you know,

you know, indigenous people to become a fighting force, nation building.

I just had no interest in that at all.

Not at all.

So for me, Ranger Battalion, what is a better path?

Coming from conventional army in the South, that's a tough nut to crack.

The good thing about is If you've got a good selection program, you will weed out the people that don't need to be there.

The people that don't think right, that aren't out of the box thinkers, you'll weed a bunch of those people out if you've got the right selection program.

It's almost like a reprogramming for

these guys, you know?

Yep.

But

when you joined,

I mean,

what was going on in the world at the time?

Were we in any conflicts?

No.

The big thing was, and it was a big impact on me, was Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan, and when he came in and the motivation to basically become, you know, being an American was a good thing again.

It was bad under Jimmy Carter, bro.

It was bad.

Things were not good.

Akin to Joe Biden.

Akin to Joe Biden.

If I had to say two worst presidents that I've been around, without question, Biden, or I say I've been alive for, I should say,

Biden and Jimmy Carter.

It was not a good time in this country under Jimmy Carter.

People were, it was a depressing time.

There was no, you know, pride in being an American.

It was just, it was bad, dude.

It just like the Biden thing.

I mean, case in point, if you wanted, you know, if you want an analogy or a kind of, hey, I want to be able to relate to that, just look at how it was under Joe Biden.

Not a good time.

Ronald Reagan comes in, turns everything around.

All of a sudden, now it's great to be an American.

You have pride in the country, building up the military.

Ronald Reagan was the, my dad, of course, put the bug in my ear to go in the military.

But next to that was Ronald Reagan.

Your dad put the bug in you.

Yeah.

Through his stories?

Yeah, through just talking about the Rangers.

I mean, I mean,

my dad being in the military was a big piece of him, who he was as a person, a real big piece.

There was no way around it.

And I, you know, so I got engulfed in that, so to speak.

And him talking about the Rangers, how he held them in such high esteem.

And I started looking into the Rangers and discovered Special Forces, Ronald Reagan coming in.

So that's what was going on in my world when I went in.

Yeah, I graduated in 1981 and I went into the Army like two weeks later.

Dude, I didn't, you know, people are like, aren't you going to hang out for the summer?

I go, nope, I'm going in.

Like two weeks after I graduated, I was in the Army.

What did your dad say when you told him that you had enlisted?

He was all for it.

He had no issues at all.

I remember him telling me one time, he said, Jake,

I don't know what we're going to do here because I don't have money to send you to college.

And he was always a penny pincher.

They kind of had the money, but, you know, they grew up during the depression

and one of those things.

So the major penny pincher, day old bread, and one of those deals.

So I don't have the money to send you to college.

But I said, Dad, don't worry about it.

I'm going in the Army.

I remember this exact conversation.

I said, don't worry about it.

I'm going in the Army.

So he was totally cool with it.

My mom, not so much.

When the recruiter came by to pick me up, to take me to the processing station, she was crying.

She was not real happy with it.

But my dad had no issues with it at all.

What did he say when you told him you were going SF?

I don't think he really knew what it was.

I don't think he ever really absorbed what it was because it was such an unconventional concept for him.

I don't think he ever really knew.

And when I joined Delta,

they told us, you need to tell your family now that you are in a special mission unit.

You need, we don't want this to be a surprise to them.

So I went home and I gave my mom and dad the bare bones.

Hey, I'm in a special mission unit now, very highly specialized, very highly trained.

And, you know, because they want you to tell them to let you know, hey, you're at risk for you, much greater risk now of injury, getting killed, being deployed.

I mean, you're,

I mean, you're basically the tip of the spear now, and in terms of the U.S.

Army Special Operations.

So, I kind of told them the bare minimum.

I could tell it just went right over their head.

Wow.

But I checked the block.

You know, I checked the block.

I told my mom and dad about it.

I told my, you know, my family, my mom and dad.

But yeah, they, I don't, my dad, I don't think ever really grasped what SF was all about.

Never.

No.

Does that bother you at all?

Oh, no.

No, not at all.

Were they proud of you?

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

100%.

Were they, do they know about Panama?

Nah,

not really.

Why not?

I think I might have told him about it, but you know, for the longest time, dude, that Modela prison thing was real hush-hush.

I mean, big time.

We didn't discuss it.

It's now decades later, of course.

There's been a book written about it.

There's in theory a movie coming out next year or whatever about it.

So it's much more open source now.

But boy, for the longest time, it was not discussed at all.

It was real under the radar.

It doesn't bother you that they never really grasped the magnitude of what you were doing.

No, not really.

I mean, they were, because like I said, by the time I got to that point, they were old enough to be be my grandparents.

Yeah.

So I didn't, it didn't really, didn't really bother me.

Never really did.

Fair enough.

And they were cool with me being in the military.

They were proud.

But what I really did in the military, they knew I was special.

I was in a special unit, and that's about it.

Gotcha.

So let's talk about leaving home.

How was that for you?

Leaving and going in the army?

Yeah.

I was all about it.

By the time that came around, I was chomping at the bit to get on with going in the army, chomping at the bit.

I remember other people's parents would say, oh, as soon as you're out of high school, you wish you were back in.

And I was like, I've never felt that.

I never felt it when I left.

I didn't feel it when I, you know, I was in the army.

I was like, are you kidding me?

I don't want to go to high school anymore.

I'm done with that.

I want to get on with life.

So I was all about it, 100%.

Didn't, you know, miss my friends.

Yeah, but I'd see them when I'd come home on leave and whatnot.

But other than that, dude, i was a hundred percent like i said i wanted to be a pipe hitter from day one you wanted to go to war oh i wanted to strap it on

so we'll breeze through the boot camp stuff let's talk about your selection

sf that's phrase

you know we were talking about this earlier i you know kind of had some questions pop up

Honestly, it wasn't very hard.

Really?

No, it wasn't.

You know what?

You're going to laugh at this.

You know what the hardest thing was?

Was the swim test.

Really?

What was the swim?

If I remember correctly, 15 meters with fatigues and boots, web gear, and a rubber duck M16.

And see, when I was growing up, I didn't swim very often.

I really didn't.

We didn't have, I mean, I certainly didn't have access to a swimming pool.

I just didn't swim very often.

It just wasn't that big of a thing.

And I kind of went into the swim test, a little bit nervous, but not really understanding what I was getting into.

And when I got in that water and started swimming with fatigues and boots on and that web gear and a weapon, dude,

it was scary.

I was floundering big time.

You could ditch the weapon and still pass.

I ditched it immediately.

And I was frantically trying to get down to 15 meters.

That is without a doubt the hardest thing that I dealt with going through the special special forces qualification course.

And I passed the swim test, but barely, dude.

No, sure.

So that was probably at the very beginning, too.

Oh, yeah, it was.

100%.

What else did you do in there?

Well,

went to phase one,

which

at that time,

because they changed it after I went through.

It's changed so much over time.

That's one of the dings on the special forces qualification course is they haven't had a lot of continuity.

But we did, you know, land navigation, we did survival, right?

And they had basically, they tried to weed out the people who didn't want to be there.

You know what I mean?

The people that couldn't cut it.

So we had some physical stuff to weed them out.

We've land navigation, survival were two big things that we had in phase one.

Did some other stuff like repelling, some stuff like that.

And we did it out at Camp McCall.

and out in North Carolina near Fort Bragg, famous, you know, famous for special operations or special forces in particular.

Weeded out.

I used to know how many guys started and how many guys finished, but when special for

when I went to the Q course, but I do remember this.

There was 13 guys

that came from jump school that were SF babies.

Only two of us finished.

Really?

Yeah.

11 guys.

Now, I got to caveat that.

A couple of them were probably medics who break off for the medic course, which took quite a while longer.

And then they come back in and finish the Q course.

So there may have been a couple of them or whatever medics that did, in fact, pass, but they didn't finish with me.

So I lost situational awareness with them.

But out of the guys I knew, 13, only two of us finished.

Or two of us put on a green beret.

What happened after phase one?

Phase two was small arms training because I was a light weapon specialist.

So we started doing,

we also did some heavy weapon stuff, mortars, anti-tank weapons and stuff like that.

But it was mainly light weapon stuff

was phase two.

I got a good story for you.

Before I went in, I knew I was going to be a light weapon specialist.

So I got these books, Combat Arms and Small Arms of the World, and I would just absorb them, looking at pictures, reading about the guns and everything like that.

And I really would study the designs and the parts on them and all that because the instructor came in.

We were doing the disassembly and assembly classes and we were on break, came back in.

Instructor goes, hey, I got a part right here that somebody left out in the parking lot.

If you can tell me what it is and what it's for,

I'll carry your rucksack on the next rucksack march.

And I saw it immediately raise my hand.

And he goes, what is it?

And I go, selector switch for a Thompson sub-machine gun.

He goes, wrong.

And as soon as he said it, I went,

dumbass.

I know what it is.

And that ain't it.

What an idiot.

And then a couple of guys, you know, guessed and everything.

I rose my hand again.

I raised my hand again.

And he goes, do you already guess?

I go, no, I know what it is this time.

And he goes, what is it?

I go, selector switch for an FNFL.

Dude, his jaw hit the floor.

How did you know that?

Because keep in mind, I'm 18 years old.

Yeah.

And he goes, how did you know that?

And I told him the same thing you did.

I got these gun books.

I studied the pictures, read about them, absorbed them.

And sure enough, the dude, the next, whenever we did the rucksack march again, next day or whenever, he carried my rucksack.

Oh, shit.

Oh, yeah.

I walked alongside him the whole way.

Were you the youngest guy in the class?

Yeah, one of the youngest.

Pretty close.

Pretty damn close.

Yeah.

I think

I might have been.

It kind of rings a bell that I was, in fact, the youngest guy in the class, but I know I was certainly one of the youngest for sure.

What was your opinion of

your colleagues that were going through?

Oh, you know what's interesting?

There was a guy named King

that I went.

He was the other guy who finished with me, and he was a dumpy-looking dude.

If you saw him, you say, hey, by the way, he just finished the Q course and he's now a green beret, you'd be like, what?

Get the hell out of here.

So the classic case, you cannot judge a book by its cover, bro.

And he, he came, I was in jump school with him, became good friends with him because I went all the way through the Q course with him.

And he's the other dude between the 13, me and him, another guy finished.

It was King.

Totally unassuming dude.

Unassuming dude.

I mean, classic case of, you know, don't.

underestimate people because this guy right here will prove you wrong.

I mean, I'm just curious.

I mean, you're one of the youngest guys in the class.

You're in a premier unit, you know, at the

tip of the spear.

It's exactly what you wanted.

I mean, the advertising said, don't try.

If you don't think you're going to make it, you won't.

I mean, so

what was that like for you being 18 years old going through

SFQ course?

Well,

there was guys I really looked up to that I was in the class with.

Majority of them came from Ranger Battalion.

Majority of them came from Ranger Battalion.

The guys I really hit it off with.

I mean, I really looked up to them.

They were studs.

I really, really liked them.

You know, I really looked up to them, got along with them great.

And they were all guys from the Ranger Battalion.

All of them.

At what point did you realize you

should have gone Ranger?

Probably partway through Phase 3,

especially after phase three and I got assigned to a team.

Because phase three was where we're, now we're going out and, you know, interfacing with guerrillas and we're going to start training them to become a cohesive fighting unit.

And now we're doing that nation building thing and all that jazz.

That's where phase three comes in.

And that's when I kind of started going,

This isn't really what I signed up for.

This is really not what I want to do.

And so it had been phase three.

And then when I got to a team and it became crystal clear

what we're really signed up to do, I was like, dude, this isn't at all what I do.

And here's another good one.

We were in desert training

out in, we're at Fort Wachuca, Arizona.

We were in desert training when Grenada went down.

And we heard about it.

And me and a couple of the younger guys were pissed because we were like, wait a minute, we're supposed to be so elite.

Super elite, green berets.

Why the hell aren't we down there?

And then the guys were like, well, that's not our mission.

That's not what we're all about.

And dude,

that was kind of the final straw for me when that went down because I thought, wait a minute, we're supposed to be so elite.

You know, we're the super elite military unit in the U.S.

Army.

Why the hell are we?

There's guys going to combat right now.

Why aren't we there?

And that did not set well with me at all.

And other guys on the team, too.

What was, so when you say phase three is nation building, can you walk us through some of that?

We jumped in to it.

We went through Yuari.

We did it in Yuare National Forest, not too far from Fort Bragg, by the way.

We jumped in and then we would start

linking up with the guerrillas, which are generally guys from the 82nd.

They would bring out 82nd guys to act as guerrillas for the SF teams.

So we'd interface with them.

There was bona fides.

We had to, you know, hey, this is who we are.

This is who you are.

Yada, yada, yada.

We'd go into their guerrilla camp.

They'd be very standoffish initially because they don't trust us, that kind of a thing.

Then we'd have to prove ourselves to them.

They had one classic scenario where the guerrilla leader wants to execute one of his guys

because the guy,

whatever, got out of line, slept with somebody's wife, whatever the scenario was.

And the detachment commander had to deal with that and try to talk him out of it.

And then never flew, by the way.

You know, that was part of the scenario.

So the guerrilla leader went out, you know, out a little ways and, you know, fired off a blank and that dude left.

And so he was essentially dead for the rest of the exercise.

So that was, they purposely put the leadership in that kind of a situation to see how they'd react, the officers, because they were held to a much higher standard, as you can imagine, because they're going to leave and go straight to an A-team.

And now they're the commander on an A-team.

Yeah.

Whereas I go and I'm a junior weapon sergeant.

I'm down here.

This guy's a, he's a commanding officer.

He's the A-team leader.

So they would hold him to a much higher standard.

So then we would go through the process with them.

We would train with them.

I gave them small arms training.

They would get some demolition training, stuff like that.

And then we would kind of start to integrate with them and they'd start to trust us and that whole nine yards.

It's about a two-week program out in the field from when we jump in to when we're done.

Gotcha.

So you get through phase three, graduate, you go to a you go to a team.

I went to a team.

Here's the thing now.

We should have went to language training.

It was an option, but it was for guys who volunteered.

I didn't volunteer because I didn't realize the importance of it.

You know what I mean?

Nobody sat me down and said, hey, dude, you need to go to a language course.

You got to learn a language.

This is a critical thing.

I went through kind of that post-Vietnam era where the Q course was, like I told you, it really wasn't that difficult.

It was kind of a shit, a little bit of a shit show, bro.

It really was.

Nobody sat you down and said, hey, look, you need a language skill.

You need a language skill set here.

You need to go take a language.

You know, whatever it might have been, you know, German, Spanish, whatever, the flavor that, you know, that might have been, but you need to go take a language.

Now, I want to say, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty damn sure for the longest time now, language is mandatory.

I believe it is.

Yeah.

You got to go take a language, which is what it should be.

So it was kind of lip service back then.

Yeah.

You know, they would, they'd have what they call these Gabriel detachment or Gabe team.

I don't know if you ever heard of it.

They'd do these demonstrations about, you know, a special forces A team, and they'd have a guy stand up and talk about, you know, I can speak, you know, some German.

He'd, he'd,

the guy would recite a line in German or Russian.

I, you know, I can speak Russian or German.

I have a working knowledge of Spanish.

It was all bullshit.

It was all smoke and mirrors.

What team did you wind up going to?

Went to 5-2-1

in 5th group, 5th Special Forces Group,

which was a Halo team.

So I went to Halo school and sniper school, and I was 19 years old.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

Yep.

I was in the team.

I got there, turned 19.

Within that year, I went through sniper school and halo school, both.

I was 19 years old and Halo qualified and went to sniper school.

I got a certificate of attendance at sniper school.

Only one of us graduated because we had M21s

and the scope mount sucked.

They would take the scopes off, put them in one case, put the rifle in another case, and they'd go back to the arms room.

Come back out to qualify, to shoot.

to, you know, to essentially hone your skills with the rifle, take the scope out of the case, bolt it back on, you screw it back on the rifle.

Oh, yeah, dude, straight up.

Screw it back on, and you're out there.

Of course, zero is off.

Yeah, it's for shit.

Yeah, so I got a certificate of attendance, and there was only one guy who actually graduated the course.

The rest of us got certificate of attendance.

It was because of the marksmanship part of it.

How was Halo?

Scary, dude.

I was scared.

I mean, as time went on, I got comfortable, but boy, that first jump,

I was scared.

And I was wet bred on the first jump.

And the instructor brought me and the other guy who jumped with me over.

And he goes, I'm going to tell you what.

It was like a Friday.

And he goes, I'm going to tell you what.

Next jump was Monday.

He goes, you got one more chance.

And after that, I'm going to have to let you go.

And I, dude, I sweated it the whole weekend.

Lost sleep.

Was, you know, working on my positioning the whole nine yards.

Come Monday, I jumped much better, passed the other dude.

They cut him loose.

Damn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you get on the team.

Yeah, got on the team.

How was that?

How is that showing up to an SF team at 19 years old?

Well,

yeah, but you know, here's the thing.

Once again, post-Vietnam, two or three guys on the team smoked marijuana fairly regularly, which really turned me off right off the bat.

I was like, are you serious?

What is this all about?

You know what I mean?

That's before they clamped down and really cleaned up the military for any drug use and smoking marijuana.

They really cleaned it up.

One of the best things they ever did.

Huge benefit.

Yeah, there's guys on there, you know, smoking dope on a regular basis and stuff.

I was like, and, you know, kind of that post-Vietnam era thing.

And

it was, I got along with some of the guys on the team.

Other guys, like the dope smokers, I never clicked with those guys at all.

I just didn't see where that was coming from.

Partially, I was a teetotaler coming from my mom.

My mom basically read me the right act one time in the backyard about I don't want to ever hear you smoking, drinking, nothing.

I was like, okay, mom, sure will.

And I never did.

I mean, it seems like there would be a lot of guys to look up to and a shit ton of experience on the team being post-Vietnam like that.

Not so much, bro.

Really?

Yeah, no, not so much because a lot of those guys were gone.

They'd left.

It's kind of almost like some of the guys that stayed behind,

they didn't leave because they didn't have anywhere else to go.

There just wasn't a lot of like real serious pipe hitters to look up to.

No kidding.

Yeah, no.

It was kind of a mess, bro.

That early 80s SF thing,

not real impressive.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So what did you impressive?

Did you wind up deploying with them?

No.

Matter of fact, never jumped free fall on the team.

The only time I ever jumped free fall was in Halo School.

Never one time did I jump on the team free fall.

Not one time.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's what I'm telling you.

So what did you guys do?

You tell me.

How long were you there?

i ended up being on the team two it basically took me a year to get through training i was on that you know q course and all that not counting halo school and sniper school on the team for two years and then they were opened up first group in fort lewis and i got levied to go they said you got to go i didn't volunteer and i said hey i want to go they said you got to go so i went up there for a year I had a four-year stint, more or less a year to get through training, two years on the team, including, you know, sniper school and and halo school and then i went up to fort lewis for a year what sealed the deal for me was when i went up there they made me the armorer the unit armor

i showed up went into the uh battalion sergeant major's office and he goes hey you know sergeant vickers blah blah blah nice you know for you coming nice to meet you whatever and he goes i'm gonna you know you probably not want to hear this but i'm gonna make you the unit armorer and i was like

Well, Sergeant Major,

he has manning board here, the teams and everything.

I go, you know, I'm Halo qualified.

I'm a weapon sergeant who's Halo qualified.

And I see you got a guy listed right here who's not Halo qualified on the Halo team, a weapon sergeant.

He goes, well, I know, I understand that, but I've already promised him the slot and all that kind of stuff.

And right then, I was like, I'm done.

I was watching the clock till I could get out in a year.

No, shit.

Yep.

So

you were on a team for two years and you guys didn't deploy, you didn't do anything.

Oh, no.

What, I mean,

what was the lifestyle?

I tell you, have you ever heard a deal about picking up pine cones?

No.

Ever heard that?

No.

Oh.

Yeah, bro.

We would get detached

to go do stuff like

stuff on the post, like pick up pine cones.

Are you?

I'm serious as cancer.

And, you know, 82nd would be doing it.

Special Force Green Berets would be doing it.

But yeah, that's that.

Yeah, doing

Fort Bragg post-cleanup.

And

that would cycle through.

Not all the time, but you would get that.

Hey, man, we got to go pick up pine cones.

And you would get on what they called a cattle car, which was essentially a big open cattle car.

for lack of a better term.

And you'd get hauled out somewhere and you'd have to police up the range or

I swear to God, pick up pine cones.

I mean, that's where the mentality was at.

Wow.

I mean, we didn't even have vehicles.

Like, if you had to go over to the hospital or the dental clinic or something like that, you had to take your personal vehicle.

You didn't have a team vehicle or anything like that or a vehicle in the company.

In order to in function, you had to.

It wasn't like you had an option.

You had to take your personal vehicle to get over to do stuff like that.

Wow.

Nothing changed over at first.

No.

No, first was a mess, too, hot mess.

What'd you do over there?

I was an armorer.

The only thing we did, we deployed to Korea once.

I deployed as the armor.

And we deployed to Korea once, went into Seoul, had a good time and all that jazz.

But that's all we did.

So this is like miserable for you.

Oh, yeah.

And that remember I was telling you about, really realized I should have gone to Ranger Battalion?

It's stuff like this.

Wow.

Yep.

What a disappointment.

Oh, totally.

Total disappointment.

How many years did you spend in SF?

Well, I got out.

I got out after four years.

I said, I'm out of here.

I got out, went back home, went to college, went to a community college for mechanical engineering to get a mechanical engineering associate's degree.

Because my thought process was,

I'll get a mechanical engineering degree and then I'll get in the firearms industry.

I'll go to work for somebody.

FN, HK, whatever.

I was really big in FN at the time.

So I really, that's kind of what I was.

I want to get a mechanical engineering degree and I want to go to work for FN.

So that's why I got out to do that.

You got out the first opportunity you had.

Oh, yeah.

Just four years, I'm out.

You know, and then I was talking to Scott on the way up here.

There was only three options at that time.

Get out, which most guys did.

Well, actually four.

And we used to talk about this.

You get out, which most guys did, stay in, which means you're not changing anything.

You become part of the problem.

You're signing on to become part of the problem.

You're not going to change anything.

You're like, I'm willing to live with this horse shit and stay in.

Three,

go be a pilot in the military somewhere.

Chopper pilot.

I know one guy left, went to the Air Force to be a pilot.

Last,

try out for Delta.

So you knew about Delta.

Oh, yeah.

Why didn't you try out?

You know what?

It's a good question.

I'm not sure.

You're sure it would be the same.

Well, no, I didn't think I'd make it because that's the option that had the least success rate, as you can imagine.

And I met numerous guys that tried out.

I did not know a single guy that made it.

I won.

Until right at the very end, I was getting ready to get out of the army.

One of the guys went and made it.

And dude, you can imagine when he came back, you want to talk about a guy who walked on water.

So I knew one guy that tried out and everybody talked about how difficult it was.

Everybody.

So I honestly, I didn't think I could do it.

But

that planted a seed that never went away.

I got out, went to college.

I was in reserves.

When I was in college, I signed up for the reserves.

I was in the 11th group up in Youngstown, Ohio.

Ohio.

I'd go up there once a month,

enjoyed it.

We didn't do shit.

You know, we never jumped out of an airplane the entire time I was there, two years.

I had a good time with the guys and everything.

But the guys in the reserves at that time or National Guard, they really needed to get away from the wife for the weekend and go hang out with their buddies.

That's all it was.

The training and everything was kind of a joke.

They didn't really, you know, they didn't really put their heart and soul into it.

It It was, hey, I want to get away from the wife for a weekend, so I'm going to head out.

I'm in the reserves or National Guard.

Did you keep in touch with the guy that made it through?

No, I saw him later on, no.

Saw him later on when I got into the unit.

He was in B squadron.

He was an alcoholic

and got more than one DUI.

And

at that time, they let you slide on one or two.

Now, as time went on yeah that was yeah they didn't you didn't slide at all but they let him slide on one or two and I think when he got another one he's like dude you can't you got to go interesting yeah he was an alcoholic stud dude was an animal he was an animal in SF legendary dude but he was an alcoholic

well Larry let's take a quick break sure and when we come back we'll pick up with you getting back in and going to the unit.

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All right, Larry, we're back from the break.

You gotten out,

went to college.

Why'd you go back in?

I just never, they always that

just that nagging feeling in the back of my mind about could I make Delta

could I do it because to me

I mean they were that's the ultimate pipe hitters to me I mean coming from the Army point of view I mean that was it and I knew it could I could I do it and it just never went away and I came to that fork in the road it's like okay I'm gonna be done here with my associate's degree in mechanical engineering soon

I'm gonna have to decide am I gonna stay on this path get my mechanical and engineering degree, four-year degree, and then go into the firearms industry?

Or am I going to go back in and try out for Delta?

Now,

this is before you could try out from the Reserves or National Guard.

So, and I got, there was a guy, a captain, actually,

who

kind of coached me and gave me some info.

He had tried out for Delta.

He ended up coming to my reserve unit in Youngstown, Ohio, and he had notes and stuff.

I want to say he even had the address for the CSM,

or the sergeant major in charge of selection at Delta.

And I wrote a letter to him and said, hey, I'd like to try out.

How can I do it?

I'm in the reserves right now.

And they wrote back and said, you're going to, you know, you have to go, you have to enlist in the Army.

We don't have a mechanism for you to try out from the National Guard or the Reserves.

So I remember going, oh, man,

this is a big deal here, dude, because I'm getting ready.

If I'm going to do this, one, long shot to make it.

Long shot.

Number two, I'm signing up for another four years back in the SF, which I disliked.

So I remember talking to my friends.

I, you know, I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking about doing.

And they were all like, oh, dude.

They were all like, man, I don't know.

I said, you know what, though?

i i got it it's just one of those i've got to scratch this itch or it's just never going to go away so i decided you know i'm going to do it i'm going to go back in specifically to try out for delta force

that's why i went back in

how long after you went back in did you get to try out

um

six months six months yeah six months after i went back in so let me think about when i went in september yeah six months

Six, eight months.

I didn't make it the first time.

You didn't?

No, I did not.

I over-trained real bad.

Because when I was out, me and a buddy would lift weights a lot.

And we got pretty, pretty big.

And I knew all about over-training, bro.

I knew all about it.

And I'd over-trained real bad.

I trained like a madman right up until I left for selection.

So my body was tore down.

You know what I mean?

And you ain't going to roll in the selection with a tore down body and think you're going to gut your way through it.

I mean, at least I didn't.

I wasn't able to do that.

So I didn't make it the first time.

Second time, though, I fell back and I went, you know what?

I'm going to learn from my mistake.

I'm going to,

two weeks out,

I'm going to rest up.

I'm not going to do any PT at all.

I'm going to make sure I'm 100% rested up.

And I was going to skip.

You know, I was going to skip

a selection.

And I went to the spring, didn't make it.

I was going to skip fall and end up going to the next spring.

But I got back and I started thinking about, you know,

nah, dude, I'm going to the fall.

I'm just, what was it like when you failed the first time?

Well, I voluntarily withdrawed.

I said, oh, shit.

Yeah, I did.

And I wouldn't have done that

if I didn't realize how close it is.

Because normally they don't let you come back if you voluntarily withdraw.

Normally, you're done.

I didn't know that until I got the exit interview with the

selection officer and selection sergeant major.

And he's like, Why'd you voluntarily withdraw?

And I said, I overtrained real bad.

And they're like,

Explain that.

One of those type of things.

I go, Well, you know, my body was torn down.

I know why I was, you know, the mistake I made.

You know, when I, when I come back, I'm not going to make it again.

And they're like,

okay,

okay, we'll let you come back.

And I was like, whoa.

I was that close

to them saying, you ain't coming back.

If I'd have known that, I would have just stuck it in there.

I mean, how long did you go before you voluntarily withdraw?

Stress day one or two, early on.

Oh, shit.

So right away almost.

Yeah, I mean, I went through the training part, you know, the train-up per se, the land navigation train-up.

And then when I got into stress phase it was early on one day one or day two and i knew i was just tore down man

could i have gutted it out and made it

i don't know i just can't tell you i could have maybe maybe a big maybe

but i said you know i just can't do this and i voluntarily withdraw and dude that no man i

I was like, my God, did I dodge a bullet?

Because it was just basically they could have, it's almost like flipping a coin.

and they could have went either way we're like okay

we're gonna let you come back i was like whoa what do you because i thought it'd be like automatic okay you overtrained okay here you go we'll see you next time

yeah man that's what i thought

i mean what is it that you think you have that they wanted to allow you to come back i i

I think on paper, because they give you a psych of Al.

They do, you know, they're testing and before you ever go.

So, I mean, I say psychoval.

You fill out this paperwork.

They go through this pretty serious process before you ever go.

And I think I was, they looked it and said, this guy is a really good candidate for making.

And because after being in the unit and kind of knowing the process, they have their eye on different people.

No shit.

Oh, yeah.

They're like, yeah, this guy's a high percentage guy, low percentage.

And then they'll start cutting and chopping.

Okay, we're not going to bring him because he's not, we're not seeing the indicators.

We're not seeing the key things we need here to bring him up to this category, to bring him selection.

The rule of thumb is that they bring in 250 applications and they whittle it down to 100.

In my case, it was 88.

88.

88 dudes out of roughly 250 applications.

But they're all, you know, they'll be made some disciplinary stuff.

There's going to be different things on there.

They go, no, this guy's.

Or, you know, a guy's from, you know,

we used to talk about it.

You know, when you're going to recruit, why are you going to Fort Hood and these different places where the chances of you finding a guy that's going to make it is almost zero?

And they go, well,

we're looking for that one guy.

And they go, you know, if we really wanted to get down to it, we'd only go to the SF groups and ranger battalions.

That's it.

That's the only place, this is back in the day before they would recruit from the SEALs or the Marines or whatnot.

But that was way before that era.

They go, yeah, we would just go to the Ranger Battalions and SF groups.

And that's it, because that's your higher percentage guys that are going to make it.

But we want it.

If that's, there's one guy that comes out of Fort Hood, we want him.

Like, okay.

But

yeah, I was that close to not being able to, but that's my call.

They, you know, on paper that they were like, hey, this guy's a high percentage chance of making it.

Gotcha.

Yeah, that's my call.

And so you go back.

Yeah, I go back.

Germany.

I was stationed in Germany at Bad Toltz.

I don't know if I told you that or not, which was a superb place to train for selection.

Superb.

Because we had some real serious hills behind us.

Real serious.

And once a month, maybe every once in a couple weeks, I would, I would ruck march all the way up this.

And I've long since forgot the name of the hill.

It was big.

And I would

ruck march all the way up, down, and back down, all the way to the top and then back down.

And superb place to try out, to train up for selection with bad torch during me.

But I mean, superb.

So I went back, decided, you know, I'm not going to skip.

And there's a good reason.

I'm glad I didn't.

We'll get to that here later.

But I'm glad I didn't skip that selection and go to the next spring i'm glad i went to that fall and they came out and i want to say they came out and did a pt test just for me at fort at at bad tolltz yeah i actually i know for a fact that's what they did i did the pt they came just because i was the only guy that said hey i want to go And they're like, okay.

And they came and gave me a PT test to try out.

And they came by themselves.

Or, you know, I was the only guy at Bad Toltz trying out.

What, do you remember what the pt test was it was a standard army pt test okay yeah at that time gotcha yeah we didn't do a swim test at that time that that one that's you did a swim test at selection okay when you got to camp um camp dawson in west virginia um but it wasn't a swim test it was just a standard army pt test you know push-ups sit-ups and two-mile run

You had, you know, had minimum standards you had to pass in order to go, and they were pretty low.

I mean, you go, well, they they have to be up here.

They're like, no, you know, we're going to let you pass the, you know, and then it's back on you.

You know, you, you're the one who has to step up to the plate and get a better PT test score.

I mean, that was the thing about Delta Selection is they always

put it back on the individual.

They're not going to spoon feed you anything.

It's they're just going to put it back on you and see how you deal with it, how you're going to respond, how you're going to adapt, overcome.

It's all on you.

They all put everything on you.

So, what was it like the second time?

Dude, I kicked ass.

My head was where it needed to be.

Like I said, two weeks out,

you know,

I didn't do any PT for two weeks, which drove me crazy.

I'm not going to lie.

It drove me crazy because I was a PT animal, as you can imagine, getting ready for selection.

Two weeks out, I completely stopped doing PT.

I rested the whole nine yards.

I told my team sergeant what I'm doing.

He's like, okay.

I didn't have to do PT with the team.

Nothing like that.

I rolled in and, dude, I was

on my A game and I fucking nailed it.

What is it like when you first show up?

First show up, you get in, you know, you bring in, they give you more testing, you get more evals.

They're kind of honing it down.

If initially it was a big, broad brush type of, you know,

a

coarse screen.

Now they're getting you in the smaller.

They're going to dial things in where they can get a better handle on what you are like as a person, what you think they're going to be like as a Delta Force soldier, Delta Force operator, and they're going to dial you in.

Then you do a PT test again.

You do another PT test.

Day one, once the things get going, do a PT test, standard Army PT test, push-up setup, two-mile run.

Then you do a swim test, 100 meters, fatigues, and boots.

Which you can't buff your way through that.

You better know how to swim, or you're not going to make it.

And I knew that.

So I trained up over and over and over.

And it got to the point where I could, I time myself.

I swam an hour in fatigues and boots because I learned how to do it, not fight the fatigues and boots, just go with the flow.

You know what I'm talking about.

And so

did the swim test.

And then that night, 18-mile rucksack march.

So one day, day one, PT test,

swim test, 18-mile rucksack march.

Holy shit.

And

if you don't make the cut on any of them, you're gone.

I take that back.

They will give you a retest on the PT test.

I don't, memory serves me correct, no retest on the...

on the swim test and no retest on the 18 mile.

But they will the very next day, they'll give you a retest on the PT test.

and you can imagine the i knew one guy that passed that which was able to pass it the next day that didn't pass it the day prior which you kind of go how is that but he did he passed it the second day but he didn't pass it the day prior the average guy it's it's going to be impossible after you've done it the first day, failed, done the swift swim test pass and did the 18 miler and passed.

You try to make up the PT test the next day, and it ain't going to happen.

Is the 18-miler, is that a land navigation thing too?

No, just the rucksack march on roads.

Okay.

Through hilly train.

Through hilly train.

Very hilly train.

How are you treated?

Totally,

no encouragement, no discouragement at all

through the whole course.

And they did that on purpose to try to get you.

And once again, they put it all back on you they don't want it like hey man good job you know what i mean or hey dude you got to pick up the pace none of that kind of stuff it was you could walk in i used to tell people you could walk in with a broken leg and they'd go color and number

and you'd have to have a color and you know they'd give you at the beginning of the day they'd give you a color and number so you'd have to remember you know chartuse 43 Chartus 43, show me where you're at and where you came from.

Because it's all Land NAB based through

serious serious hilly terrain it's like a buddy of mine said there aren't mountains there but there's some damn big hills

and that's the truth camp dawson is surrounded by damn big hills so you're doing land navigation and it's like show me where you're at show me where you came from and you show them came you know i'm here came from here and you you know you got to show them the right thing on the map you can't you know hey you know if the guy got it wrong you go you go over there reassess where you came from and you got to oh, I came from here, Sergeant.

I'm right there.

Okay.

Your next point's underneath that rock.

And you'd have a little, you know, laminated piece of, you know, have something laminated.

You flip it over and you'd write down where you're at.

You'd plot it on the map.

And you go up.

You know, you say, come on up, chart 243.

Come on up.

Show me where you're at, where you're going.

I'm here.

I'm going here.

Have a good one.

And that cycle repeated over and over and over again through, and you don't know long.

You don't know how much time you got to get from point A to point B, and you don't know how many points you're going that day.

So each point is timed.

Yeah, oh, yeah.

Each pointed.

It's not the full course.

No, each point.

I mean, the full course is essentially time, but you don't really know.

You don't really know where exactly you're going.

No.

You might have four points one day.

You might have six points the next day.

How long does this last?

Six days.

And then on the seventh day, you do the 40 miler.

This is stress phase.

Okay.

We talked about the PT test, swim test, 18 miler.

Now after that, you get into basically, for lack of a better term, the training phase.

They're going to teach you how to do land navigation.

And the reason they did that used to be back in the day, you just went right into stress phase.

But they found out this isn't fair because there's guys who would probably make it that don't know how to do it.

They've never had land navigation training.

So they would put you through 10 days to two weeks-ish, more or less 10 days-of the best land navigation training in the U.S.

Army.

It has to be the best land navigation in the U.S.

military, or probably in the world.

I mean, magnificent land navigation training.

You had CADRAE living,

CADRAI-led

land navigation.

It was just magnificent.

Really, really good.

You know, map reading,

you know, dead reckoning, you know, you, you know, go around hills, mountains, all that kind of thing.

It was just really, really good training.

It was superb.

But

it was also kind of grinding you down.

So everybody kind of got to a certain level.

You have a stud or whatever.

He's not going to be 100% going into stress.

Because you're going through the same hills, rocky terrain, twisting your ankle, that kind of stuff.

So it's kind of taking even the studs and grinding them down a bit.

So when they get ready to do stress phase, they're not on their A game.

If they're lucky, they're on their B minus game.

Gotcha.

And then you start stress.

What's stress?

Stress phase is that six days with the seventh day being

a 40-miler.

And you stay out in the woods in a tent in the environment.

You're eating MREs.

You know, you get, at the end of the day, you'll get in these trucks or Humvees.

At the time I did it, it was trucks and you don't know where you're going.

The guys who don't make it that day go back to Camp Dawson.

The guys that make it for that day pass, they go to the base camp.

They put up their tent and you eat your MREs and then you crash out and they tell you what time you got to be up and it's on you.

They're not going to wake you up in the morning.

You got to be, you know, you got to get yourself up.

You got to put away all your gear and you got to be standing by ready to go when the trucks come in in to pick you up and take you.

Then they take you back out to another point and they, you know, Chartreuse 43.

They're going to give you a different color and number that day.

Vickers, you know, purple 1-2,

truck number three.

I jump on, and I have to remember purple, you know, one, two.

That's my color and number for that day.

And then you go out, they bring you out.

Purple one, two.

Your points over there.

You go over the same thing.

You take it out.

This is where I'm at.

This is where I'm going map.

Show me what you got.

This is where I'm at.

This is where I'm going.

Have a good one.

That's the only encouragement you're going to have a good one.

That's it.

And the 45 process.

The 40-miler.

Now, before I get to that, there were people that didn't finish one day that still made the course.

And you're like, how can that be?

My call is, and by the way, the standards are the

holy grail of the unit.

There's only a handful of people that have ever known the standards.

I mean, they are,

that is the deepest, darkest secrets in that organization.

I was in the unit for 15 years and I had no idea what the standards were.

I could guess, but I had no idea.

Only when you got to a certain point, like the commander or the command sergeant major, or you were the selection commander or selection sergeant major, would you be read in on the on the you'd be read in on the tea leaves?

So there's only really two people that make the determination if you fit the standard.

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

Even the cadre that are there, don't know.

They have no idea.

The cadre, oh, I have no idea.

None.

You would call in the times, you know, Purple 3-2, Vickers, you'd tell them what time he got here.

He, you know, arrived at 12.15.

You know, he left at 12.32.

So does that mean it's solely based off of time?

Because that, to me, that means there's a gray area.

What do you mean?

I mean, you would mention that there are people that didn't maybe make the time, but they still got in.

Yeah, here's my thing.

Nobody knows the time.

I mean, I would, I understand

why

the

guys trying out would not understand the time.

But for the cadre to not know the time, and only two people,

it sounds like four out of all of the unit knows the time,

that there's a gray area there where they may have identified somebody that they want that made.

No, I never did that.

They never did that.

I know what you're talking about.

It never happened.

They were Nazis about it, bro.

I mean,

they would only select certain people to be the selection officer, you know, selection commander or selection sergeant major.

There was only certain people that did that.

That was not something where they just randomly come down to a squadron.

All right, dude, you come on up to, you know, ST, you're going to be the, no, no, no.

You were, you were hand-picked, hand-picked.

And you're, you had a track record in the unit.

You'd been in the unit for a long time.

No, no, no, no.

That's not, I'm sorry.

That's not what I meant.

That's not where I was going.

What I meant was for the selection, for the guys going through selection, if nobody knows the time,

then time is obviously important, but they may identify something in a, what would you call them, a trainee?

The guy's going through selection.

Yeah, candidate.

A candidate.

So they may identify a candidate that doesn't meet the time standard, but they like everything else about it.

Oh, yeah, no.

Wouldn't matter.

If you don't meet the time standard, you could be a rock star, and it wouldn't matter.

How would nobody, how would nobody, it's general, it's a genuine question.

I'm not like poking holes in it.

I'm just trying to understand.

I mean, how would, how would more people not figure out what the time is if you could just go through the times and go,

that guy made it, that guy made it?

Obviously, it's under X.

The thing is, all you had was

the only information you had as a cadre

was your little small vision of the world.

You didn't see the whole,

you didn't see him at this point, this guy at this point, this guy.

It's compartmentalized.

Yeah, it's compartmentalized.

You always only saw your piece of the puzzle.

You didn't see what

he was doing.

You didn't see what he was reporting.

And the only guy that got all that was the S T Sergeant Major who's out there running it.

Yep.

And running the numbers.

I mean, there would be something to the point that you would go walk.

If you had to go up to his truck or something, you'd be like, stop.

And he would take,

put everything away.

You know, so you couldn't come up and look over his shoulder.

Yeah, what do you need?

I mean, it was top secret, bro.

Top secret.

Do you remember your time?

40-mile, yes, 16.

Now, according to the book,

according to Charlie Beckwith's book, Delta Force, you had 20 hours to do the 40-mile.

You had to do two hours, two miles an hour in very hilly train.

Very hilly train.

Some of it on roads, some of it on trails, some of it cross-country.

And you had to do it in 20 hours.

I believe that's accurate.

I think that's legit.

I did it in 16 hours, 20 minutes with 40 miler.

Damn.

Let's move.

Yeah.

Dude, I know some guys who did it in unbelievable times.

Unbelievable.

What was your strategy?

On the 40-miler.

Yeah.

Keep moving.

Take the simplest path because I knew people that had tried to take shortcuts and it bit them in the ass.

They got nailed in Mountain Laurel and they completely lost track of where they were at.

They had no idea where they were at.

They were trapped and that was it.

And they were done.

They couldn't get out of it.

So I would just take, like, there's one big hill, gigantic monster hill after you do a river crossing.

It's about, I want to say it's about 25, not

about 25 miles in.

And you got your next point is at the top of the hill.

I kept it simple.

I basically took, I did the switchback road all the way up.

A lot of other guys just did this number, and most of them did not make it because they would get caught in mountain laurel.

Number one,

it would smoke you to death.

It would be so incredibly difficult to do that 25 miles into a 40-mile rucksack march.

And

you're going dead reckoning at the top of this hill.

I mean, I know people that did it, but as a general rule, it was a kiss of death.

But I did switch back all the way up until I could see that top road.

I cut over to it and came into the point.

But I just kept it simple, stayed focused.

I didn't try to do anything fancy, kept moving.

I stopped one time to have a little bit of an MRE, and that was it.

I kept moving the whole time.

I wasn't worried about running it.

I was just trying to stay positive and stay moving moving the whole time.

When do you find out that you passed?

The 40-mile.

When you get to the last point,

they call up and they, you know,

purple 12s here, Vickers, and they'll run the numbers.

They'll go, okay,

you know, send him on up.

And you basically, and they go, okay, you know, Vickers or Purple 1-2, your next point is at the top of that.

You know, basically, it was a power line clearing.

At the very top, maybe a kilometer not very far at all you're greeted by the um

s t sergeant major and the s t cap or commander that's who greets you at the top and if you don't make it you go over here if you do make it you go over here by the fire and they're like you know sergeant vickers congratulations you successfully completed the stress phase of

you know

Delta Force selection and assessment.

Dude, I immediately started crying.

I mean,

I just gushed.

I was, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that did that.

Hardest thing I ever did in my life, bar none.

Bar none.

Out of 88 people that tried out, that started, 13 made it

and 11 got through OTC.

So 11 guys made it through OTC, crossed the hall into one of the saber squadrons out of 88.

Damn.

Dude, there was classes.

They had in the hallway outside OTC, they had all the different class pictures.

There's a guy who, he was the only dude out of the whole class that finished.

No.

Ray Pfeiffer, yep, Ray Pfeiffer.

He's standing there by himself in the picture.

Damn.

Others, three dudes.

Others, two dudes.

Stuff like that.

I remember one, I was an S ⁇ T instructor and we had five.

Five guys made it through selection.

Wow.

We had to do an OTC class with like nine dudes because we had those five guys and then we had four direct support basically medics combo guys eod

oh no yeah they went through they would go through otc too now they there's certain things they didn't do they didn't do cqb

but they would do everything else you know i mean all the helo operations they would do they would do patrolling they'd do everything else because they're going to be augmenting the operators but they wouldn't do cqb there's certain things that they didn't do.

But yeah, they would go through OTC.

So we had nine.

One guy broke his ankle.

He had to get bumped to the next class.

We ended up having eight for an OTC class.

Wow.

What was the conversation like at the campfire?

Well, they had some gluevine.

You ever heard of that stuff?

Yeah.

German, right?

Yeah.

I don't drink alcohol, so I didn't have any, but they have that.

You can partake.

You don't drink alcohol no you never have no i never have are you

yeah courteous my mom i told you remember my mom absolutely do not drink because her my mom's my grandfather who i never met because he'd passed away my mom's dad had passed away before i was born was an alcoholic

so my mom was like

uh-uh This is like unheard of in the special office.

Oh, yeah.

By the way, dude, in Delta, there was more than a few people that didn't drink.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That was not uncommon.

And it was not uncommon.

And more than a couple guys drank when they got there and stopped because they realized if they didn't stop and get it under control, they were going to be booted out.

They were going to be shown in the door.

And I know a couple guys that completely stopped drinking that had come there.

Because they knew if something went wrong, if they didn't get it under control, because they came from SF or wherever, and the drinking was a big part of the culture and whatnot.

Now they come to Delta and it's not.

The drinking's not, not that the guys don't drink, don't get me wrong, but it's not that big culture thing.

Like we're going to go out and get trashed every Saturday night, that kind of a thing.

No.

Gotcha.

And so what was the conversation like at the fire?

You remember it?

Basically how difficult it was, comparing notes.

Hey, you remember that?

Oh, yeah.

Did you go there?

No, yeah.

Because there was one part, which they discontinued.

You get up to the top of this hill, and this was on day one, I think, stress day one.

And there's a dude sitting there with a steak dinner.

He's in a suit, and he's got a table there, you know, a glass of wine or whatever the hell it is, and a steak dinner.

And he's the cadre at the top of the hill.

And you're like,

And he goes, you know, color and number.

Show me where you're at, where you came from.

Your next point's located over there.

Okay, color and number.

Show me where you're at, where you're going.

Have a good one.

Now, here's the thing, though.

Not everybody goes to that point.

So guys start doubting each other.

Like, I didn't see that.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, man, there was a guy up there.

Don't you remember that?

No, I didn't see it.

I didn't.

There was no guy with a steak dinner at a table.

You know what I mean?

That kind of little bit of a psyops thing.

Over time, they did away with that because they were kind of like,

what really is this bringing to the table for us and so they did away with it they moved the um

swim test to otc

and i'll tell you why they did that at the time dude we didn't that did not go over well in the unit we're like whoa whoa whoa stop time out what are you doing well their thing is like number one

The guys barely go across any bodies of water in the unit.

I mean, they're, you know, in selection, an OT, or in selection.

You know, there's one river crossing during the 40-mile, and now you go across a bridge.

They used to have a pontoon boat that take you back and forth.

And you go across a couple creeks.

So having the guy pass a swim test in order to attend selection doesn't really make much sense because back at his unit, he may not have access to a swimming pool where he could practice.

So let's bump it.

Let's say, let's get the guy through selection, that one or two dudes,

whatever that might be.

Let's get him through selection.

And then in OTC, at the very beginning, now we'll give him a swim test.

And then now he's had, you know, a couple months, whatever,

now it's on him.

Okay, now you've got to find the sources.

You've got to find a pool.

You've got to find the ability to go and practice for the swim test.

You know what the swim test is, and you know you're going to be evaluated on when you get to OTC.

As far as I know, there was nobody that failed it.

By the time they got to OTC, they're, you know, when they signed in, when they got the swim test, it was no problem.

Nobody failed it.

And so, what happens the next day after you pass selection?

More, well, chilling, you rest, then more evaluate, more psyche valves.

Lots of psyche.

Oh, dude.

Famous story.

What's that?

That's the way I always passed them.

Think about fuzzy bunnies.

Fuzzy bunnies.

There's a famous story, and I don't know if it's true, but I don't necessarily doubt it, that the Unit Sykes had it nailed down so tight

on who would make selection

that they put a list of names in an envelope.

gave it to like the S ⁇ T sergeant major, and at the end of the corps, end of selection, they were going to open it up and see what guys finished selection versus the names on the sheet, and they nailed it.

Wow.

Now, that's, that could be a wives tale.

It could be an urban, but I, they had it really nailed down.

I know more than a few guys who,

um,

in SF, that once they got to a certain point, they were done.

They, they sent them because they just, they narrowed the, the,

the beam down or whatever you the focus down to the point that they could tell this guy's not going to work out.

And we, you know, because they had, they kind of had institutional knowledge per se of different people in the past and psychological profiles and indicators and, you know, little triggers, stuff that they can dial in on and go, this guy is just not going to be a good candidate.

So they would actually, they would actually pull guys that are making the time

just because they didn't think.

Well, what would happen is they would go to the board and then they'd get cut.

Gotcha.

Yeah, they would go to the board and they get cut.

And that's how it would go.

And so when did you start OTC?

Wall selection, finished October, started it right after New Year.

Signed into a unit in December.

Got, you know, our got our gear, all that deal.

Went on Christmas break and then came back right after New Year and started it.

So you had about, you had, what, three months?

Yeah, ish.

What was that three months?

What'd you fill that with?

Basically went back to bad tolts.

And once again, now I'm the guy that walked on water

because you go back to that unit.

I mean,

you can go your entire Army career and never meet one guy who made it into Delta.

Real easy.

Real easy.

And I went back and they were like, I made it.

And they were like,

I mean, right then,

dude, I mean, you're like now six inches off the ground.

And then you're basically, then you have paperwork.

You hand your chain to command.

And it said,

you know, individual has been, you know, selected for a special missions unit.

Orders will be coming down.

There is no deferment allowed.

He will absolutely, you're basically telling them, reading them the right act.

You know, this guy is going to go to Fort Bragg, and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it.

Because he's now...

you know, he's been selected at this level.

You're at this level.

You're not going to stop.

And they had to do that because units, you're losing some of your best guys.

This guy's a stud.

He's one of the best guys on your team or in your battalion, Ranger Battalion or whatnot.

And now he's leaving.

Now I'm going to do whatever I can to keep him.

Boy, they shut that down.

By the time I went through, I'm sure early on that was a real problem.

That's why they give you that piece of paper that you hand, you know, you hand to your chain of command.

And they, by the time I went through, there was no issues.

Everybody, hey, made Delta, he's gone.

So they would kind of just write you off.

You're kind of on your own doing your own PT,

you know, getting ready, packing up, waiting for the official order to come down so you know when you're actually leaving.

How was it checking into OCC?

Overwhelming at first.

You're like, oh my God, I'm coming through the gate into the Delta Force.

You come in,

totally overwhelming.

Then you start seeing the guys that you made it through selection with.

They're going to be in your OTC class.

You get the initial in-brief from the instructors, different instructors than you saw in West Virginia.

That's cadre out of the squadrons.

So like a troop out of one of the squadrons will go up and rotate through every, you know what I mean?

B squadron might have it this time, C squadron, and then those are different guys than you see for the OTC instructors, totally different guys.

It's not one in the same.

And then you'll get introduced to the instructors and you kind of get your gear together and all that.

Just pretty overwhelming.

Fortunately, they ease you into it you know what i mean then you're doing pt but it's their thing is like now

we want to keep you in shape

but we don't want to break you down because you've already proven that you you you have what it needs from a what you need from a physical point of view that's what you just proved in west virginia now

we want to train you

You know,

we have assessed you and feel like you are the correct raw material to become a Delta operator.

Now we want to train you and evaluate you to see if, in fact, you can become a functional member of the unit, a Delta operator.

So that's the difference there.

The PT isn't designed to tear you down.

I mean, it's designed to keep you in shape, team building, because now it is, yeah, it's individual, but now it's also can you can you function as a team?

How are you treated?

Oh,

like adults.

Yeah, no, no discouragement, no harassment.

Yeah.

Is there any interaction between the guys going through OTC and the operators?

Very, very little.

Basically, no, and it's discouraged.

It's very discouraging.

Like,

you hate, because a lot of the guys know guys in the squadrons.

And they're like, you see them in the chow hall, you can say hi, but that's it.

You don't talk to them.

And then the guys in the squadrons are told, don't interact with the guys in OTC.

because you don't want to give them, hey, heads up, you know what I mean?

To my buddy, oh, by the way, watch for this, that kind of stuff.

Gotcha.

So you're basically both sides of the equation.

The OTC students are told, don't interact with the guys in the squadrons.

The guys in the squadrons are told, don't interact with the guys in OTC.

Can you describe day one of training?

You know, right off the bat, it was all about shooting.

The first two weeks was all about shooting.

Dry fire,

we did like,

I want to say at least, maybe,

I don't know if it was a week,

at least like three days of dry fire before we ever made it to the range, at least, all day,

all day long for the first three days.

And I could be wrong on that.

It may be longer, but it was all about shooting right from the start.

Because they realized shooting in CQB is what that unit's all about.

I mean, that's the meat and potatoes.

That's the very core of what that organization is about is the Delta operator being able to do shooting and conduct close quarters combat.

And that's everything in that organization revolved around that.

Everything.

Everything.

I mean, there was different stuff you did like VIP protection.

high-speed driving, you know, different airborne operations.

You would do helo operations, you know, you'd do a variety of things, but it all boiled down to what is the meat and potatoes, what's the core of what we're all about, shooting, seeking B.

And we started out with marksmanship, and then that was a common thread throughout.

Were there qualifications?

Oh, yeah.

What were some of the tougher quals?

Well, we'd have accuracy stuff, bullseyes at 25 yards, pistol stuff.

What size bullseye?

Standard B8.

So you're talking a five and a half half inch black.

Damn.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and then you'd score it.

And you have different scoring rings on it, a possibility of 100.

You have to score to a certain, and I don't remember what they were, but you have to, you know, you have to score to a certain amount in order to pass.

And then you evaluate it on that on a pretty regular basis.

Very accuracy-oriented.

Delta is famous for that.

And that's why you see instructors out Delta, they're all accuracy-based.

Because

under, nobody's going to have to tell you, and you go, what about speed?

Well, here's the thing.

Nobody's going to have to tell you to shoot faster in a gunfight.

I'm in a gunfight.

Nobody's going to have to say, hey, dude, shoot faster.

That's never going to be a factor.

The issue is getting hits on target.

So you have to make sure.

And I have a personal

rule of thumb that I go by is under conditions of stress, the best you will be able to perform is 50% of your normal,

you know what I mean?

If I'm shooting at a certain, on the range, the best, the absolute best I can hope to perform under conditions of stress is 50% of that particular standard.

So you have to hold yourself to a high standard because, you know, I'm only going to be here when I'm being shot at.

What about rifle?

What were some of the tougher rifle qualities?

We had stuff.

We would do basic rifle marksmanship with M14s when I was there initially, accurized M14, national match M14s.

As time went on, they did away with that.

And it was full-size M16A2s.

And then they eventually went to the M4.

And it was, you know, different positions, standing, kneeling, prone, you know, basically different position shootings.

Once again, very bullseye-oriented.

And for score.

And

you're evaluated to that stuff and ranked.

and you had to meet a certain standard, or you would generally get remedial training, but after a certain point, and then we had guys fail it, and generally they'd be put out of the unit, or

they would be put in a support role in unit where they were not an operator, where shooting wasn't necessarily

not important.

It's important for everybody there, but not as important as it is for an operator.

So they put them in a support role.

Then, once you got to that point, the real thing that weeded people out was CQB.

That was really what it boiled down to.

That's what weeded people out.

Because you,

you know,

you can take a guy through selection, you can have him shooting.

But when you go into a room and there's somebody shooting past you by a matter of inches,

That there's some people that absolutely cannot handle that.

And we saw that with guys, you know, about every class, there'd be somebody.

I'm remember one guy, everybody liked him.

He's a great dude.

All the instructors liked him.

He just could not do it.

He couldn't do it.

And he basically said, hey, I can't.

I can't do this.

I can't do it.

And he, you know, we let him go.

How complicated does it get?

Pretty complicated.

You know,

you can do it with protective mask on and all that jazz, but, you know, it gets to the point where you're coming in on a, you're fast roping in at night, you know, door charges, flash bangs,

you know, live people.

You have live bad guys.

You got to shoot past them and targets.

You can even get simmunitions going on where you're being shot at with semunitions.

You're shooting back at them with some munitions.

That kind of getting very complicated and get really ramped up.

And what you see is

it really starts separating people.

What you see is guys that, you know, if I'm coming into into the house and it's during the day and I can see all the targets, that's one thing.

But now I got to come in on a fast rope and it's in the middle of the night and the Hilos are flaring and dropping guys off and there's rotor wash and we got to put up door charges and then we got to use flash bangs and there's a team on this side of the hall and there's a team on this side of the hall.

We have to make sure we're not doing crossfire.

All that stuff starts to come into play.

Then some guys really start come unraveled.

How many, i mean what would

what is a

does everybody have cqb experience before they show up from their prior unit no no how many we have some we have now a lot more because you get you see rangers doing it green berets doing it that kind of stuff because it's trickled down

because let's face it

i mean

guys in you know those combat arms they i mean we see in infantry units too they know they need to know how to do some basic cqb

and they need to know how to do it because i mean it's urban combat you're flowing into a room with bad guys you need need to you need to know how to be able to do at least a basic level of cqb now they're told right off the bat how many guys know how to do cqb here nobody puts their hand up and they go yeah you got the memo right there's the right way there's the wrong way there's the delta way

and you don't know shit about cqb till you show up here and we will teach you the way we do cqb

how long do you spend on cqb oh dude

otc is basically six months throughout the six months

i'd say three months of it is cqb

if you you know it's spread out because now you're doing you know you're doing vip training and you're doing high-speed you're doing you you do a uh pow POW training, of course, towards the end, but you're doing different segments of the training of OTC.

But the constant, the common threads are shooting and CQB.

So if you go away for VIP training, when you come back, you're going to roll right back into some shooting and roll right back into CQB.

So I would say the shooting and the CQB portion in OTC, a six to seven month program is probably half of it.

I mean, CQB just gets so complicated.

And,

you know,

I'm just curious,

when you show up at OCOTC and you have guys that, you know, that have, and it sounds like back then there was a lot of people that had zero exposure to CQB.

I mean, I had none.

What I'm trying to do here is

bring to the audience how complicated this can get.

You know, and so when does it move from, you know, a center-fed door with no windows, no exterior doors no nothing you're just targets in there to

to a full building takedown where you got to worry about exterior doors you're clearing rooms through windows into the next room you're clearing other you're you're

you know what I'm getting at yeah and it that's it's not just targets it's sectors of fire it's reading off the guy next to you it's reading it's it's it's green on green stuff.

It's shooting through windows.

It's clearing rooms before you even enter.

I mean, how, how fast is the pace?

That gets, that's the bottom last third.

That's the last two months.

Okay.

I have a six-month program,

six, seven-month program.

That's the last two months.

How long do you, how long do you spend on just the basic center, you know, a center-fed doorway into a room with no, with nothing exterior to worry about?

Oh, man, that, that basic, basic level, probably a week.

A week.

Yeah.

And then it just starts going from from there okay we're in this room now we got to go to that room

and then that kind of evolves so that that

that really basic stuff probably two weeks two weeks maybe three

and then different structures on the compound they have multiple structures to do cqb in stairwells hallways stairwells hallways hallways you get used to this shoot house soon as they're used to it now we come over here how many shoot houses are there oh my god

If I had to guess now,

when I was there, probably 10.

10 different shoot houses.

Yeah.

Yep.

If I had to guess, I'd say 10.

How long is it before you start using live ammunition?

Really soon.

Let you in on something.

There's three things that dialed me into this is the NFL.

This is the big leagues.

Number one, when I got there and we were using gold medal, federal gold medal ammunition for bright basic rifle, we weren't using standard ball.

We were using federal gold medal, gold medal match for our M14s.

Basically $1.50 a round ammo for our M14s.

I knew right then because I knew enough what that ammo, how expensive it was.

I'm like, whoa.

We had MAG-58s instead M60s before the M240 was adopted.

And the Marines were using the M240, or

the Rangers, we were using them before any of them.

I knew right then, head and shoulders gun over the M60, and we had MAG-58s.

Last one, the big one, we carried live ammo all the time, everywhere on Fort Bragg.

You saw a guy, a Delta guy, out

on a four-wheeler, on a ruck march, or whatever, he's got live ammo on him on Fort Bragg.

Really low-key.

That's something that everybody did, nobody talked about.

82nd Airborne didn't know anything about it.

Unit MPs, I mean, because that's unheard of in the regular army for guys to be walking around with live ammo.

You had live ammo on you all the time.

Why is that?

To get you used to having live ammo and being responsible with it.

You know what I mean?

How to manage the load, manage the weight.

Knowing that when I'm handling my weapon, my weapon's loaded.

So I have to be aware of muzzle,

finger off the trigger.

I have to be dialed in on what's going on with this weapon because it's loaded.

It's ready to go.

Yeah, whoever dreamed that up, I got to give them, I mean, way back in the day, the OG Delta guys, I got to give them credit.

How long has Delta been around before?

1977.

I got there 1988, so 11 years.

Now,

77 when it started, but that was very much in its infancy.

So they really, they didn't get ramped up till about 79, and then

Desert 1 was aid 1980.

so really the unit had been up and running about a decade-ish by when i got there maybe a little bit less

and you talking about some mac v sog pipe hitters organized that unit and started it we're talking about some serious og pipe hitters got that place going that knew from what it worked and what didn't work in vietnam and they made sure that we didn't do the same mistakes when they started delta so this is where the vietnam guys went Yes.

Guys like Dick Meadows,

OG,

serious OG pipe hitter.

It was a guy that was in on the ground floor.

He was retired, but Charlie Beckwith brought him in to get that organization going.

And he kind of set the tone, set the standards for the organization, him and others.

But, you know, MAC VSOG legends like Dick Meadows, those are the guys that laid the groundwork.

And I'm sure those are the guys that said, guys are going to be carrying live ammo all the time.

So wouldn't, when you were there, you were probably there with a lot of the plank owners.

Do you guys call them plank owners?

Yeah, um, plank owners for the audience means that they are the original guys, yeah.

Actually, there was quite a few

we would, they're OTC one,

the guys that were there from that were there from OTC number one and on.

Yeah, oh, yeah, we were there from some of them.

What class were you?

OTC 23,

yeah, 23,

Yeah.

When I was there,

there was about 200 people that had been Delta Force operators.

That's it?

That's it at that time.

I have no idea where they're at now because it's been, I've been out of there for 20 years.

Yeah.

So I don't know where they're at.

But OTC 23 and there have been about 200 guys that have been Delta operators.

Wow.

In

a decade.

What was it like at graduation?

Oh, dude.

Well, you know, interestingly enough, they didn't make a big deal about it.

It's called crossing the hall.

You'd come in, you'd get an interview, they'd assess how you did in OTC, and you're going to A squadron.

That's where I went, and that was it.

You packed up your stuff.

Your stuff was already packed up because you were going to be moving that day.

You knew whether you passed or not,

or

you were going to the squadron.

You just didn't know what squadron you were going to.

And you would take your stuff over and they'd say, yeah, you're on F team or whatever.

And you go into F team and put your stuff in the wall walker.

What did they say at your review?

I was, interestingly enough, I was the first guy

in West Virginia to go in for the board, and I was the first guy after OTC to go in for the board out of my OTC class.

Very first guy in West Virginia that went in for the board, very first guy that went in.

um to after otc and people said well that's nothing to it bullshit

I know for a fact now, because I was on the other end of this, they're bringing in a guy that's a no-brainer that's obviously going to go to the unit

or he's finished OTC because that warms up.

That gets the guys who are on the board warmed up to the questions and the sequence and the program of how you're going to interview these guys.

Man, I remember telling me, well, there's no rhyme or reason to it.

Horseshoe.

I knew at the time, I go,

that doesn't sound right they're you know what i mean they're going to save the guys are questionable towards the end

and they're going to save those guys that are questionable towards the end the guys that may they may need to grill and i'm not really talking about otc they pretty much know you you know whether you're going to go to a squadron or not that's kind of a given talking about in west virginia at after selection they they keep those guys to the end that they may have to grill for 30 minutes and you know because they've tracked this guy all the way through.

They know what he's done right and what he's done wrong.

We've had a couple guys that, I mean, I thought they were good to go.

They got bounced on the board and selected.

Wow.

Yeah.

What did they say at your board?

I made a classic mistake.

I, oh my God, I, they asked me a question and they go, well, why'd you do this?

And I go, well, you know, other guys did it too.

Oh, dude.

Yeah.

I mean,

that's the kind of comment I made.

And I go, well, you know, I'm sure other guys were doing it too.

Oh, my God.

They were laid into me on that one.

As soon as I said it, I was like,

why did I say that?

And then

they start talking to you and they go, well, you need to understand something, Sergeant Vickers.

Delta Force is part of the army.

You know,

you have to be part of the army if you're going to be in.

And then they kind of lead you up to where you're like, oh, my God, they're going to tell me I didn't make it.

They purposely do that.

And then at the very end, the commander goes, I want to be the first one to welcome you to the Delta Force.

How'd that feel?

Oh.

Unbelievable.

I mean, the high of the high.

The only one thing was ever higher than that.

One thing.

Rescuing Kirk Muse out of Modela prison

in my life.

Wow.

Yep.

That's the only thing that is higher than him shaking my hand.

And then they all come up to shake your hand.

So, yeah, they bring in, early on, they bring in the guy that's a no-brainer.

This guy's no-brainer.

He's going to unit or he's going to a squadron, no-brainer.

And that's just to warm the board staff up.

The guys are on the board.

Because quite a few of them, it's the first time they've been on a board.

They don't really know the sequence.

And they're coached.

Hey, these are the kind of questions you asked.

This is the kind of responses you're looking for.

But you got to get them warmed up to being on a board.

And

they do.

Early on, you're bringing in guys that are no-brainers.

Do you remember what they asked why you did

whatever it is that you did?

No, I don't.

Do you remember any of the specific questions?

No, I really don't.

I just remember that one response that just opened the door for them to, I just realized, oh my God, why did I say that?

Well, other guys were doing it, you know, or whatever.

Something.

Well, I'm sure other guys were doing it too.

That was stupid.

I knew it as soon as it came out of my mouth.

But I don't remember exactly what the question was.

No,

I don't remember exactly what the question was.

Where did you go from there?

From

selection or from OTC, A Squadron.

A squadron.

Yeah, A Squadron.

I I went to A2 troop, F team.

And I was a junior guy on F team.

How did they greet you?

Good.

Treated as a professional.

No, you didn't look down on anybody.

You know, a little bit of hazing and stuff, but real minor stuff.

Nothing major.

Because, you know, you respected the guy.

You probably already gotten word.

Hey, this guy is a star.

He was one of the best guys.

You know what I mean?

Or, you know, this guy kind of needs, you know, he's okay, but,

you know, he obviously met the standard or he wouldn't be going to squadron, right?

But you may have already kind of gotten the word on the guy.

He may be a guy who thinks he walks on the water.

You might need to knock him down a couple notches.

You know what I mean?

Or, hey, this guy's a stud.

We got word.

Yay, this dude was an, he killed it in OTC.

And they're like, really?

He goes, yes.

The SEAL we had, Kevin Holland,

superstar, came from ST6.

And we watched him like a hawk.

I put put him through selection.

He was our number one guy.

No shit.

Oh, dude.

He killed it.

He absolutely killed it.

I remember talking to him.

And at the end, I go, dude, do you know any more guys in the SEALs like you?

And he goes, yeah, we're going to, I go, talk to him about coming here.

I go, because we need all the guys like you we can get.

He was a rock star.

And we were watching him like a hawk.

Like he's a SEAL.

You know what I mean?

Came from ST6.

You know what I mean?

Dude,

the dude was a rock star.

Absolute rock star.

He was the number one guy in his class.

Wow.

He killed it.

Absolutely killed it.

By the end of it,

any of the caddy would have taken him on his team in a New York second.

When you did show up to A Squadron,

how do you...

How do you feel that your proficiency in CQB and just being an operator in general measured up to the guys that were um you knew you were at a pretty basic level because the guys there had been doing it many of them for years now

you've only done it for a few months

now that being said i went in i mean cqb wise one thing a lot to learn i i shot at a very high level as soon as i walked across the hall

i was

you know, within probably the top top five guys shooting-wise, as soon as I walked across the hall in A-squadron.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

I've always, one thing I've always, you know, I was just had the ability to dial in on combat marksmanship.

And I did.

I, I was probably in the top five as soon as I walked across the hall.

Is it competitive?

Oh, yeah.

How so?

Um, you know, on a team, you don't want, basically you don't want to embarrass yourself.

So when you go out and shooting, you know, there's peer pressure.

It's not overt.

It's not like in your face or nothing like that.

But, you know, if you don't do real well, you beat yourself up.

I mean, you're in Delta Force.

And this organization is known for shooting.

If you don't hold the standard, you're going to beat yourself up.

If it gets bad enough, you're going to get talked to.

Your team sergeant is going to pull you aside and say, dude, you got to put in extra time.

You know, if I need to work with you, I will.

We'll get you dialed in with one of the best shooters here.

You know what I mean?

If it gets bad enough, pretty rare.

That's pretty rare.

What's the culture like?

I mean, coming from the SF team,

which you were really unimpressed with, what's the culture like at Delta?

You know, SF team, we've talked about this a little bit, kind of a little bit more of cohesive partying type.

We're going to drink together.

You know what I mean?

Come over to the house on the weekend.

We're going to watch football and drink, that kind of stuff.

Delta

is much more,

from when I was there, much more mission focused,

really focused about why you're there and what you're all about.

Camaraderie and whatnot, but it's like, hey, going over to your house on the weekend and drinking beer with you and watching football, that's over here.

What we're about is right here.

And it's the organization.

And once I go back to the Dick Meadows piece, I don't know how much you know about the guy.

There's a fantastic book written about him called Quiet Professional.

Is that the name of it?

I'll think about it.

Maybe on break, I'll look it up.

But

this dude set the standard.

He was Mac v.

Sog legend, never lost a man in combat.

Wow.

And Mac v.

Sog.

13 POWs captured.

He captured more

enemy combats.

Enemy combat, not POWs, excuse me.

And enemy combatants anybody.

He's the guy that went in and got, he became an officer because of this and eventually became a major, retired major.

He went in and he got video footage, him and his team, video footage of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to prove that the Ho Chi Minh Trail actually existed.

No, shit.

That was sent back to Congress and Congress was shown this is the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

And Dick Meadows is the guy who did it.

I mean, we're talking about a Mac B.

Sawk legend.

And he set the standard.

He was in charge of the assault force on the santa raid

so when you went in there you didn't know it but he you had that dick meadows umbrella or standard set unbelievable planning i mean detailed planning down to the absolute smallest detail and delta that's what we were all about

so it was a

a serious focused organization in terms of mission focus partying at your house on the weekend for and watching football, that's not very important.

This is what's important.

So that's, you asked about what's the different culture, what's the different feel, that's it.

Delta is all about the mission.

SF, and I'm not saying it's not, but it's, you know, you got more of a,

you know, it's just more of a,

it's just a different feel to it.

Like I said, come over to the house, you know, and we'll drink beer over the weekend.

We'll have a team party.

We'll cook out.

That's all cool.

And we did some of that stuff in Delta, but nothing like you saw it elsewhere.

Nothing.

It was all about,

and there were some legendary team team leaders.

Some of them were absolute Nazis,

absolute Nazis about stuff.

Like you were supposed to be in at 8 o'clock, going on the range.

You were firing the first shot when 8 o'clock hit.

Gotcha.

Not show up and we're heading to the range at 8.

You're on the range pulling the trigger and the first bullets going down range when 8 o'clock hits.

And the dude, there were Olympic, and you've seen them too.

You were in the COC, you've seen what I'm talking about.

Olympic-level athletes.

I mean, guys that were,

I still can't believe some of the physical accomplishments that they would do.

Yeah.

And guys that were Olympic-level athletes in the organization.

You've seen it.

I've seen it.

I mean,

you're a stud to get in that organization to begin with, but guys that are on this level.

Wow.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll get into some of your operations.

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All right, Larry, we're back from the break.

We covered OCOTC.

You're at the unit.

You're in A squadron.

How long are you there before you go on your first operation?

So

I got there

summer of 89,

and we ended up doing Panama in December of 89, so six months.

Six months, and you're on your first mission.

Yep.

And

we'd heard Scuttlebutt

that

there was a guy, we heard it was a CIA guy, that was held in Panama

in a prison and

there was

people working on it in terms of a rescue mission and it followed the squadrons in terms of when you were on an alert cycle you would work on the mission and then when you came off alert cycle it would go to the next squadron you would hand it off

And they would develop the plan and

rehearse and they'd tweak it.

And then when they came off alert cycle, they'd hand it off to the next,

you know, hey, this is what we got.

And we didn't know if it would ever happen because it was all part of the bigger picture.

In terms of it was called Blue Spoon, and eventually became a just cause.

And it was going down to overthrow Noriega and his government, is really what it was.

The Kirk Muse

rescue

was a piece of that because

one,

George Bush Sr.

had made it a priority, hey, we're going to rescue this guy.

And

we knew

he was held in Mandela Prison, which

was the premier prison in Panama City.

I mean, it was basically their model prison or whatever you want to call it.

It was the number one prison in the country.

And that's where he was being held.

And it was a block away from the commandancia which is essentially the panamanian pentagon

so it was basically in right in the heart of the belly of the beast for lack of a better term

and we knew if we didn't get him at the beginning he was going to be killed as soon as the the invasion went off so

the Just cause was initiated by the rescue operation to get Kurt Muse out.

That started the sequence of events that became just cause in the whole countrywide effort to overthrow Noriega and his government.

Can you describe what was going on at Panama at the time?

Well,

a lot of, you know, at one time, Noriega was basically an ally of the United States.

Well, that flipped.

The guy's corrupt.

I mean, he just, you know, he was a shitbird.

And

there was a lot of unrest.

There was a lot of tension

between the Americans and the Panamanians, and it was escalating.

It just over time, it just got worse and worse and worse.

And it all came to a head when

just before Just Cause kicked off, A Squadron was on our alert cycle.

We'd been training for the Modelo prison raid because we'd had it got a handoff and we were putting our, you know, tweaking it, putting our, you know, touches to the mission.

We'd been rehearsing it.

Where there was a, I want to say a Marine lieutenant that was killed at a checkpoint.

I want to say right near the commandantcia.

They started harassing the guy.

If memory serves me correct, the way it worked was he was in a vehicle with a couple other military personnel.

And he kind of, when they kind of went through this checkpoint, and one of the Panamanians shot at him and hit him and killed him.

Shit.

Killed this Marine lieutenant.

I think it was a Marine, but I know for a fact it was a U.S.

military personnel, lieutenant, and was killed.

I remember hearing about that on the news.

And I went, ooh,

this is not going to go well.

And sure enough, our beeper went off like that.

And I went, oh, I got to go in.

And we went in.

I saw Eldon Bargewell, the squadron commander, MAC v.

Saug legend,

and he said, Blue Spoon's going down two days from now.

Like, whoa.

And we got on the birds and we were down.

We were the first ones down to Howard Air Force Base before all JSOC came down and basically descended in SOCOM.

JSOC and SOCOM descended on Howard Air Force Base and established that as

an HQ for the special operations piece of of Just Cause.

And this has been building up for a while.

We've been doing rehearsals.

I had some pretty major rehearsals for it.

Basically, like I said, it was called Operation Bluespoon and then became Just Cause.

And by the way, it's called Acid Gambit now.

Or we, I never heard during the mission, ever heard

the terms acid gambit.

Never did.

It was only till later, much later.

And I'm not sure why that is.

You know what I mean?

What were you guys,

what was the

FTXs for?

I mean, did you guys have, I know what they were for.

Did you guys have a layout of the prison?

Did you know where he was?

I mean, how Nat's ass

was the entire question of that from you guys, to you guys, to plan this.

There had been an Army

doctor.

who'd been allowed to go in and see him.

I don't think it was once a week.

I think it was once a month.

And he was in there nine months.

I think it was once a month.

This Army doctor was able to go in and check on his health and welfare.

And the Army doctor was debriefed extensively every time he came back.

So we started getting really good intel on where he was held inside the prison.

you know, what condition he was in, the layout of the prison.

We were able to get some really good good intel from this Army doctor.

We would do flybys

when we were down there initially.

We went down initially

to train up.

We would do flybys with helicopters and look at the top of the prison from a distance

and kind of, you know, take photos and whatnot and kind of get the layout of the top of the prison, you know, because it was right next to a Howard Air Force Base.

It was right next to it.

So it was totally totally plausible for helicopters to be flying nearby, not right over the prison, but nearby.

And we would get visual on the cupola at the top and the door on the cupola and all that kind of stuff.

So we had a substantial amount of intel.

And would you guys, I mean, I know that there are certain units that can

basically build a damn near an exact mock-up of the target that they're getting ready to hit.

Were you guys, did you guys have that capability at that time?

Yeah, we did.

But we had a great tabletop layout.

I think the CIA built it.

I'm pretty sure they did.

And I assume they still have it at the unit.

It was on display.

But we had a great tabletop layout, you know, model.

There was a big Bluespoon operation down in Florida, and they built a mock-up of the prison down there.

They built an entire mock-up.

They built an entire mock-up.

The prison

is four stories.

Remember, it serves me correct.

There's pictures of it online.

I'd I'd have to look, but I think the prison's four stories.

They were only able to complete three stories

before we did the rehearsal.

But

they had a mock-up of the prison built down on

Eglin Air Force Base.

And that's what we did the rehearsal out of.

And then we hit the prison.

That was a part of the big Blue Spoon rehearsal.

Did they move Muse

to different cells every time the doctor would come back?

No, they settled.

I believe initially they were moving him around, but he got settled in on the,

if memory serves me correct, the second floor.

We had to go down two floors to get to him.

The second floor, they settled him in to one spot.

He was kind of in the VIP prison cell by himself.

And

we'd heard he was kind of in a VIP, a little bit bigger prison cell, whatnot, but he was being held in, you know, we knew where he was at the doctor and he'd been there a while in that in that cell wow

and the doctor that's actually pretty fucking surprising yeah that they wouldn't move him around every single time the doctor came just to

you know

to not have you guys have an exact replica of where he's at you know

in hindsight i really don't think they even visualized us coming into that prison to get him.

No kidding?

Yeah, I just think that, because if you look at it from a layman's point of view, we're going to break into a prison and get somebody out.

It's kind of like, seriously,

how the hell is going to, that going to happen?

Well, I'm wondering the same damn thing, to be honest with you.

So

you go down to Panama,

you guys got a mock-up in Florida.

You wind up in Panama.

You're doing flybys.

You're gathering intel.

Let's talk about Muse.

Who was he?

He was an American, good guy, by the way.

We're personal friends now.

He calls all the guys that were on the mission every anniversary every year, December 20th.

He calls them on every single person and thanks them for rescuing him.

Great guy.

American civilian down there.

Kind of

involved in the community.

Very anti-Noriega.

Kind of started an anti-Noriega cell, so to speak.

Cell doing what?

You know,

disruptive activities towards the regime.

Like the most famous one was

Noriega was going to give a speech.

And right in the middle of the speech, they cut in with anti-Noriega propaganda

over the radio.

That's the one.

That's the most famous one they did.

Exact timeline on that, I'm not sure.

But that, Kurt said, that's the one that really put them on the radar screen

was when they did that you know now General Noriega is going to speech or speak bam they cut in and they're giving out their propaganda against him

so

he was a dependent his wife worked as a school teacher on Howard Air Force Base

so he was a military civilian dependent

She was a, you know, military, she was civilian, DOD civilian, and he was a dependent

of her.

You had mentioned earlier that you had heard that he was a CIA asset or a CIA guy.

Was he?

You know, he's talking to Kurt,

he said the only support he got from them was real late in the game.

He met

some agency guys in Miami to get radio equipment.

to help his cause.

That's what Kurt's told us.

And I have no reason to believe otherwise.

I mean, he's never given me a reason to that, you know, he was an agency guy and he's kind of operating undercover or whatnot.

I've never gotten that from him.

So I can't speak to other than what he said is late in the game, he got some assistance from them.

Well, I think that pretty much paints the picture then.

I mean,

I don't think the CIA is just handing out equipment.

Good point.

Valid point.

But

and so he was disrupting, he was basically propaganda against Noriega.

Yep.

How many people had he amassed?

Do you have any idea?

You know, I only think a handful because he's obviously stayed in touch with him.

I think there was a handful of guys.

And

he mentions how he got rolled up was basically Noriega went back to his, you know, basically bribed people to, hey, give him up.

And one of the wives, wives, if memory serves me correct, one of the wives of his guys, his network, gave him up.

And that's how he got rolled up.

Yeah.

Through a bribe.

What were they doing to him in prison?

Anything?

No, I don't think they really did much.

I think psychological warfare, but I don't think they ever did anything physical like that.

I do remember.

I don't know if you've ever heard of this or not.

There was a coup attempt against Noriega by some Panamanian Defense Force officers.

And they actually captured and they had Noriega under house arrest.

Noriega was able to talk his way out of it.

Those officers got scarfed up.

I think they were later executed.

But Kurt talked about,

if memory serves me correct, talked about one of the

officers being strung up to the basketball goal out in the common area of the prison and being tortured.

But I don't think Kurt ever went through any of that.

I think it was just psychological warfare.

I'm pretty confident he never was physically abused.

How prepared for the mission did you feel?

More prepared than any other mission I've been involved with, bar none.

We rehearsed it, went over it, refined it, rehearsed it, went over it, refined it to the nth degree.

Nth degree.

Yeah, we

that

up to, you know, of my time in the military was the gold standard in terms of preparation for a specific operation.

At what point did you guys get the green light?

Once that lieutenant was killed and beeper went off, I went in.

I remember seeing Colonel Bargewell, squadron commander.

I was going in to fill up my canteens and he's going, Blue Spoon's going down to

24 or 48 hours from now.

I was like, whoa.

and i knew blue spoon going down which became just cause meant we were going to initiate modela prison you know right before the actual um invasion kicked off

i knew that's what that meant what was the briefing like

well

everybody knew what they were going to do

because we'd been rehearsing it It was A2.

Actually, it was more than just A2 troop.

It was a sniper troop as well.

A1 troop was basically on standby to react to any of Noriega's henchmen that popped up so they could respond and

scarf them up.

Never really happened, by the way, but that's what they were standing by for, A1 troop.

A2 troop was involved in the assault, and A3 troop, the sniper troop, was involved in the operation as well.

And they basically provided security on top of the prison.

So this was legitimately just

A2 and some snipers.

Yeah, A2 troop and all the sniper troop.

How many guys?

23.

I say all.

Not all.

Majority.

23 went on the prison, went on the roof.

And with Muse coming out, it's 24.

Shit.

How, I mean, how big was this prison?

It's pretty good size.

I mean, it's a pretty good size.

If you research it on the internet, I'm sure you can find some pictures of it.

It's pretty big.

Yeah, we'll overlay it right now as we're talking on.

We're doing our best to try to find the pics.

Yeah, we'll get them.

But, I mean, what were you guys expecting?

Well,

we got word somewhere along the line.

that they'd ramped up and they expected if we were going to try to rescue him, it was from the ground.

So there was PDF kind of housed on the ground floor in the prison and an adjacent building.

PDF, Panamanian

Defense Force.

Yep.

Yep, Panamanian Defense Force.

They were housed down there in theory for a rescue attempt for Kurt Muse.

So they were expecting this.

They were expecting it, anticipating it, and knew it was a possibility.

And they expected us to come in on the the ground floor.

And so, what was go time like when you got down there?

Well, we knew initially it was going to be, I want to say 45 minutes before the invasion kicked, but it ended up being 15 minutes before the actual invasion kicked off.

Um,

we got situated on the burrow.

I remember we were down there.

I, you know, we were down there, like I told you, before anybody.

And then all these JSOC people come in, SOCOM people.

And I remember, dude, the night before,

I didn't sleep a wink.

And I'm sure nobody else did either.

Wasn't scared, was just anxious.

Edge of my seat,

going over in my head, over and over and over and over,

my role, what I was going to do, my actions, just over and over and over.

And I'm going to tell you what else, too.

We started getting briefed by the pilots in terms of, okay, if the chopper goes down and we're injured and you need to shut down the rotors this is how you do it and i remember looking around the faces the other guys and dude everybody had their game face on

i mean it was it was for real

and i remember colonel bargewell mac v sog legend the distinguished service cross mac v sog I'd heard scuttle butt, we heard scuttlebutt, he was actually put in for the Medal of Honor and it was downgraded to the DSC, partially because he was a real rebel in Mac V Saug.

That's what we'd heard, and I don't doubt it.

But I remember him talking to us, going,

You know, I can see you guys,

I've seen this face before.

I had it when I was in Vietnam.

Everything is going to be fine.

We're going to get in there and get him, bring it out.

You guys are going to be good to go.

Was it a night up?

Oh, yeah.

0, 0, 45 hours, and 15 minutes before 1 in the morning.

And we were out on the

lined up, four little birds.

Interestingly enough, except for one bird, we had six dudes.

Two birds had two pilots, three guys on each pod.

Other two birds had one pilot

and three guys on each side, except for one spot for Kurt Muse.

And they had skeletonized the bird, taken taken out everything one pilot there he i heard him talking about the other day um had one round in his pistol he didn't even have a full magazine ammo we weighed in every day our our kit

i mean i i didn't we didn't even have a hard plate

yeah on our body armor we took the hard yeah i'm dead serious every single day we weighed in to make sure that our weight was exactly where it needed to be every day because the weight was that critical because they wanted as many bodies in there as possible.

In case things just totally went sideways, you wanted more bodies, more delta operators than less.

So it went down that critical.

And they skeletonized the birds.

I'd heard scuttlebutt, and I'm pretty sure this was debunked.

And I don't think this actually happened.

They started the bird and then took the battery out to save weight.

I later heard that was bullshit.

I think that was discussed, but it wasn't actually done.

Wow.

Yeah.

So it was that

it was that close in terms of weight.

You take off.

I mean, this is just, I mean, this is your first real-world op hostage rescue mission in Panama.

That's fucking crazy, man.

Well, and what's interesting, I'll never forget it.

Guy went through

selection with.

Went through selection with him, went through OTC, went to A squadron with him, and now we're on the mission together.

We're on the pods, you know, sitting on the bench seat on the pod.

He's right here, and he's going to be on the roof with a MAG-58.

I actually go into prison, I'm one of the guys that go in.

I was actually the first guy to go in through the prison door.

And I'll get to that in a minute.

But he looked at me, I looked at him.

He stuck his hand out.

I shook his hand.

No words were said.

Nothing needed to be said.

Never forgot it.

I mean, it was game time.

Nothing need to be said.

I'll never forget it.

And then we took off.

Interestingly enough, I think it's the school that Kurt Muse's wife actually taught at.

We flew over a school on Howard Air Force Base.

It is a school that we did a rehearsal on.

We did a rehearsal on it and one of the little birds had hit a tail rotor and a chinook had to come in before daytime.

A chinook had to come in and lift it off and get it off the top of the school.

And this was, you know, a few weeks before, two weeks before, whatever the case

was.

But it was a

rehearsal site and we flew right over that school.

So it was kind of like deja vu.

Wow.

Came in.

I was on bird number two

going in and there was birds behind us, two birds behind us.

We'd gotten word that in the major intersection right going down to the commandancia and in the prisons over here, There was a machine gun set up.

There was PDF.

They had to be dealt with or they were going to fire at the birds coming by.

Well, we had a sniper team that came down, they came down off a hill overlooking the

intersection.

Guy had a bolt gun, guy had a Mag 58, guy had a three dudes, guy had an M203.

And the theory was they're in position, they're in Overwatch, and as soon as they see one of the PDF do this, they're going to light them up.

And what I understood happened was the first two birds go over.

I was in bird number two.

The first two birds go over.

There was nobody in the intersection because I remember looking.

I was on the right side.

I remember looking, looking for anybody.

There was nobody there.

We went over, they heard the birds, then they come out.

And then they're going to shoot at the second set of birds, bird three and four.

And they got lit up by the guys in the Overwatch position.

Interestingly enough, never forget this.

Christmas lights run the top of the prison.

It's December 20th, 1989, right before Christmas.

There's Christmas lights.

I'll never forget it.

Wow.

And we were offset from the prison.

And then the pilots did this number and then got in line.

And the line landed right on top of the prison.

And it peeled off.

I got in position by the cupola.

I had security position looking through the window down the stairs, the couple on top.

And in the second two set of birds came in, they dispersed.

Breacher on my team went up to put a charge up.

And in the process of pulling the, you know, the time fuse, he knocked the charge down.

And it fell right in front of me, about from me to you.

And I was like, What is that?

I didn't even, you know what I mean?

It didn't even dawn on me.

It was the charge.

Fortunately, when he went to pull it,

he did not ignite the time fuse.

It probably would have killed me.

If memory serves me correctly, it was a C6 charge, which was P for plenty, brother.

I mean, we were not going to take any chance of getting in that door.

It was P for plenty.

It probably would have killed me.

Because I ended up going from being the guy looking through the window, now I'm going to be the number one guy, you know, going through the door.

And I was down on the knee and I was like, What is that?

I couldn't believe it.

And I remember my team sergeant came up.

He goes, Hey, man, get the backup charge ready because I had a backup charge.

And I go,

Why am I going to get the backup charge ready?

Because the breacher's right there.

Within the breacher went back around.

And he said, Hey, come on.

He basically had me come up for the cover.

I covered him on the door.

He put the charge back up.

We initiated.

And dude, it was a boom.

I'll never forget it.

It was a boom.

When I was looking in the cupola window, the lights were on.

I thought the charge knocked out the lights, and it was because it was pitch black.

What actually had happened, the snipers, the support guys had hit the generator and killed the lights.

I didn't know that till later.

They killed the lights in the prison, so it was pitch black.

I come around, door is long gone on the cupola.

I step in, there's no landing, Sean.

Here's the door.

The steps go right up to the door.

There's no landing like this where you step in and then go down the steps.

It goes right up the door.

Like, you know, out here, you guys got.

There's none.

So I almost, by the grace of God, I don't know how I didn't trip because it's pitch black.

I'm walking into it and by the grace of God, somehow I didn't trip.

Went down.

The guys are following me and people are like, well, why are you number one, man?

I was the most expendable guy.

It's that simple.

I was the new guy on F team.

F team and G team were going in.

F team secured the inside, the route, inside the prison stairwell, the hallway, that kind of stuff.

G team was the ones that are going to extract him.

They're going to be the team that gets him out.

So you basically set up the corridor.

Yeah, we did.

Went down.

Basically, me, I can't remember who it was.

Me and another guy held that first stairwell.

G team followed, fled, you know,

went past us.

Now I go down to the next stairwell.

There was actually a room that we were going to clear.

Well, we didn't clear it because it was padlocked.

We're like, okay, not really a threat.

Chances are nobody's in there because it's padlocked from the outside.

So we didn't clear it.

And I was standing there on the stairs.

And then, about then,

the C-130 starts lighting up the Commandantia.

Shit.

Yeah.

Yep.

Spectre starts lighting up the Commandantia.

And it was loud.

And I could see right out the window.

I mean, right there.

I'd look right there and I could see the commandancia getting lit up

by the Spectre.

And because they had given us X amount of time,

I'm not sure how much time it was, but not long.

Maybe five minutes, maybe not.

Who knows?

I don't even remember.

It was not long at all to get in, get situated, and then they were going to start lighting up Comdoncio.

So they started lighting it up.

We're holding the stairwell.

Somebody, a PDF guy, a guard or whatever, poked his head around.

Gary Harrell was there.

He was the troop commander.

He shot at him.

I think he missed him.

Pretty calm.

He claimed later he thought he hit him, but I'm pretty sure he missed him.

Not today, because the guys took off.

And then they came out with Muse.

They put a C4 charge on his door and blew the door wide open.

There was a

guard

that had told Kurt if there was a rescue attempt, he was going to kill him.

Because Kurt, I think, asked him, hey, if there's a rescue attempt for me, what are you going to do?

And he goes, I'll kill you.

This guy was in the room right across from Kurt.

So the priority was to get down to Kurt as soon as possible to beat this guy before before this guy gets a situational awareness, figures out what's going on, goes over to Kurt's cell and kills him.

You guys knew that before you went.

We knew it.

Yep.

Was he in the cell across?

Yeah, he was.

He was in the room across.

He was in the room across, and G-Team went in and killed him.

Yep.

He was armed with a pistol.

I think the guy, I think he was in a shower.

if memory serves me correctly.

G-Team found him in the shower.

I think the guy went for his pistol or already had a pistol in his hand and they killed him.

Yep.

They got Muse out.

They brought in a little, you know, aviator kit bag.

They had body armor and a helmet, you know, a body armor and a Kevlar helmet.

Peeled him out.

I remember seeing him go up the stairs.

A couple things.

We get up.

We tell him, hey, you know, PC Secure to get the extraction birds out.

The reason Books called six minutes to freedom, because from when we touched down to when we called, you know, PC Secure called for Xfil was six minutes.

Just not that we were holding, you know, it's just the way it worked out.

Not like we had a set time standard or anything like that.

It just happened.

It was six minutes from when we sat down on top of the prison to when we were ready to X fill with Kurt Muse was six minutes.

Wow.

We were at the very top.

You know what I mean?

Stairwell.

I remember I was here, Kurt Muse is here, and that door is here.

Dude, I'll never forget this this as long as I live.

It got quiet for a minute.

Now how long?

Like a C-130 maybe was taking a loop around, didn't have a clear field of fire, whatever.

Got quiet and you could hear the prisoners screaming.

And when you hear somebody screaming who honest to God thinks they're going to die,

It's a sound you'll never forget.

Now I'll never forget it.

It's nothing like you see in a movie or any of that other bullshit.

These people were convinced they were going to die and they're trapped in these prison cells.

And I'll never forget that sound.

Damn.

Yep.

So we go up, Birds Land.

I was on bird two.

They get Muse on bird one.

They put him in, you know, inside the bird.

He's not on the pods.

They put him inside the bird and then they G-team who rescued him and then they're ex-filling with him.

I remember I got on the pod.

I was like high five and I didn't even bother to hook up.

But my

combo guy hooked me up.

Thank God.

But I'm high five and I go, we got him.

You know, yada, yada, yada.

Well, the bird lifts up.

And bird one kind of does this number over the prison wall and goes into the blackness.

I mean, it's pitch pitch dark.

You can't see him.

There was a

cemetery right beside us.

We lift up, we go over, and I see Muzzle Flash, dude, shooting at us.

And I didn't get a beat on him, but I put some rounds down at him to get him.

And then Muzzle Flash stopped.

I'm pretty confident I did not hit the guy, but I at least got him to duck.

So he's no longer shooting at our bird.

We lose track of bird one.

We go back to Howard Air Force Base.

We land.

I'm like, awesome.

Bird one went down.

Bird one with Kurt Muse went down.

What happened was

they were serious.

They had two pilots.

They had six dudes with Kurt Muse.

They were seriously overloaded.

And the pilot tried to gain speed and kick back up, but there was power lines.

So he's worried about hitting the power line.

So he sets down on a road, a street, right on the other side of the cemetery.

Well,

four guys from G-Team jump off and get out, and they're pulling the security.

The pilot like waves him back, come on, because he's going to go down.

He's essentially going down the street to gain, you know, airspeed, and then he's going to lift off.

They get back on, three of the four guys don't hook back up.

So

that becomes critical here in a minute.

Anyway, they go down.

He takes a left on the street and he starts to lift up.

And Bird gets hit.

Crashes.

One guy, three of the guys all fell off.

One guy was still, the team leader was still, he was hooked in.

So he was good to go.

And Muse, who's in the back, is good to go.

And there was a guy from my team, my 2IC assistant team leader, was basically with him, escorting him.

He was fine too.

Bird goes down, breaks the right strut off.

The right strut had landed on one of the guys who fell off.

It landed on his foot.

He lost his big toe.

I want to say on his right foot.

He lost his big toe.

And never, he stayed in the unit, but you can imagine when you lose a big toe, dude,

you're never the same.

Two of the other guys on the other side got shot.

One guy got shot in the leg.

One guy got shot at the very bottom of the body armor.

They got hit.

Bird goes down, tilts to the side.

The pilots are doing their best to stop the rotors.

There's a rotor still going.

Muse gets out.

My team assistant team leader who's escorting Muse gets out with him.

He didn't duck down far enough.

My assistant team leader.

He gets clipped up side to head, this pro tech with the rotor.

Knocks him out.

he goes down knocks him out he wakes up here's muse laying down prone

and he you know he immediately freaks out muse muse he thinks muse is dead he wasn't what happened was muse sees him go down so he mimics him he's oh man he must have gotten shot i'm going to get down prone

so he they both get out of there they go and they kind of hunker around the station wagon.

If memory serves me correct, there was a station wagon.

They hunker around.

Team Leader hunkers them around, around, gets the wounded guys over there.

Muse is there.

My assistant team leader, who's, you know, got clipped up side to head, whose bell is rung, they, you know, they kind of hole up around this vehicle.

Some Panamanians are coming out.

Muse tells him in Spanish, he speaks magnificent Spanish, to get the fuck out of there.

Team Lear's on the radio telling them what happened.

Eldon Bargewell, squadron commander, is still on top of the prison.

What had happened was one of the guys on bird three or four did not get on the bird.

Not sure who it was, but he didn't get on the bird, so he missed the X-Fil.

He was left behind.

Eldon Bargewell sees this.

He jumps off, grabs a machine gunner with him, guy armed with an M60.

And they set up on top.

And Elton Bargwell is on the, you know, on the horn.

He's on the radio dictating what's going on.

Well, he hears, Elton Bargwell hears the team leader call, hey, you know, Bird One's down.

So, once again,

remember how he told you we rehearsed this thing to the nth degree.

We had ground forces coming in.

basically in APCs

that were rolling in and we're going to basically swarm the area.

And sure enough, they rolled in.

We had Delta Medics and APC

and they rolled up to the guys, peeled them in.

Delta Medics started working on them on the spot.

And we took them up to Exfil to get Ex-Filled to Kazavak station on Howard Air Force Base.

Damn.

Yep.

We had all that wired for sound.

In case what bird goes down, we have to Ex-Fill.

Birds can't come in to get us out.

We got to Exville off the side of the prison via fast rope.

How are we going to do that?

So we had this whole Xville procedure down and worked like a champ.

Contingency program, contingency plan.

I remember hearing later the,

because it was conventional forces that were doing this, the APC guys, right?

I mean, it wasn't us operating it.

It was the, so we got it, they got attached to us.

And I remember hearing some of them go, oh, I mean, one guy goes, dude, I knew it wasn't going to be good.

When I saw these guys show up in Pro Tex and black body armor, I knew this wasn't going to be good.

Yeah.

He showed up in black body armor and Protex.

And man, I goes, I just knew this wasn't going to be good.

But yeah, they,

you know, moved in.

Good thing they did because a good friend of mine was shot in the leg, really good guy.

Probably would have bled to death almost certainly.

if he hadn't gotten medical treatment that quick.

Damn.

Yeah, he probably would have bled to death.

But they were on him in no time, scarfed him up in the APCs and took off.

And then

Blackhawk came in and got Eldon Bargewell, machine gunner, and the other guy out of there.

It took a lot of fire.

And what happened was, if your bird was out of action, you were out of action

for the

entire mission, just cause.

You were done.

So that bird went back.

It hovered over the prison.

It took fire from the commandant's area.

It took hits.

And

by the time he got back to Howard Air Force Base, the bird was done.

That was a deadline for the rest of the mission.

So that pilot and that bird was out of the fight after that.

How did Kurt get back?

Kurt went in, landed,

basically with the APCs, because they lifted off.

What happened was the APCs went up to this top of this hill adjacent to where those guys, remember the dudes I told you, the Overwatch team, they came down from that hill.

They went up to the top of that and got on Blackhawk.

And then they took off and went back to Howard Air Force Base.

Before he left Howard Air Force Base going back to the United States, he asked to go see the guys that were wounded in the Kazavak hospital.

And he did.

He went in and said, hi, thank you for rescuing me, you know, saving my life, that whole thing.

And then he went on a bird and he was back to the States in no time.

Did you meet him?

No, not then.

No, I didn't.

Didn't meet him till actually quite a bit later when he came to A Squadron, came to the unit and A squadron and briefed his side of the, you know, of the mission and leading up to it, all that.

What did he have to say?

Well, he kind of laid

very articulate guy, very articulate, well spoken.

He kind of laid out everything that happened from his point of view.

You know, how it led up to it, how he got captured, you know, his time in the prison, his perspective for the rescue, that whole nine yards.

He laid out all that stuff from his point of view, his timeline and his

perspective on how the whole thing went down.

What was that like to meet him?

It was pretty cool.

We all dug it.

I was telling Scott about this on the way up here.

We had a picture.

The damn guy who took the photo, the whole thing was out of focus.

All the guys that were on the mission got a picture with an A squadron classroom, got a picture with Muse.

The whole goddamn thing was out of focus.

Everything was blurry.

And instead of taking multiple, you know, as one of those got it.

Yeah.

Instead of taking multiple pictures, I mean, it's like, come on, dude.

So it was useless.

The picture was useless.

But yeah, it was pretty cool meeting him.

I'll bet.

Getting him out of there.

So that was the only thing that's trumped me making selection was rescuing him out of in Medela prison.

I mean, what was it like with the team after that mission?

Very tight, tight-knit.

The guy who got hit in the head,

my 2IC, never really recovered.

He had

the injuries.

I mean, he's basically never really recovered from that.

He had major headaches, that kind of stuff.

Bad thing is, about six months later, we were back down in Panama doing jungle training.

We got on, we were about ready to do an impromptu mission on a suspected drug site, you know, basically, you know, a jungle drug operation.

And Eldon Bargwell kind of set it up.

It was an impromptu mission.

We were going to go hit it.

We lift off in the Black Hawk.

All of a sudden, we hear these pops, pop, pop,

almost like the bird had been shot.

It wasn't.

It was one of the engines that went out.

So we start crashing down in the jungle.

Right?

He's sitting on an ammo box.

Him and a couple other guys are sitting on an ammo box and the bird comes down and hits and it compacts his spine.

And he basically never walked again.

Same guy who got clipped in the head.

My 2IC never walked again.

He was wheelchair bound after that.

Damn.

Yeah.

Bird come.

I was on the bird.

Just so happened, I was sitting by a guy.

We were looking to the Ford,

looking through the

windshield of the bird, and the pilots are doing this stuff to try to keep the bird under control coming down through the jungle.

And

laid my first of three helo crashes.

And he laid back like this, and I just so happened to lay back.

So when we hit, I was laying flat

against the floor of the bird like that.

The only thing I was looking forward, and my head bounced off the floor and knocked me out temporarily.

Shit.

My teammate who was beside me, he remained conscious.

There was a fire.

The bird had had caught on fire

everybody else was knocked out out of action he

got up got a

fire extinguisher and put the fire out basically saved everybody's life never got a single award for that

never got a single he should have got a soldier's medal for that never got shit damn

and delta's real bad about that um and i'm sure they are to this day

the old analogy that I think it was Schumacher used, Commander General, Colonel Schumacher said,

firemen don't get awards for going to fires.

That was his quote.

You signed up for this organization.

You were expected to do these things.

And when you do those things, you're not going to get awards for it.

We got bronze stars.

The guys in the mission all got bronze stars with V-Device.

The exception of the team leader that rallied the guy, his team around with Muse.

He got a silver star.

Melden Bargewood told us when we were in, you know, we were in the classroom or whatever.

He goes, if this had been Vietnam, in Vietnam, you guys would have all gotten silver stars, which means that team leader would have got DSC.

If this had been in Vietnam, you all would have gotten silver stars.

And I remember at the time going, and sure enough,

looking at it back on hindsight, he's right.

That's exactly what would have happened.

Wow.

But yeah,

that guy who put the fire out didn't get get anything.

Nothing.

Didn't get a soldier's medal.

Didn't you know barely ought to thank you?

It's like, for real?

Damn.

And the units was real bad about that.

And I'm sure they still are.

Like, you know, that payne got the medal of honor out of the unit.

I'm going to tell you what.

For that guy to get the medal of honor and still be alive at a Delta Force.

I can only imagine what that guy had to do to get that award.

And when we're talking about superhuman shit out of that organization to get the Medal of Honor, because the other two guys that ever got it went in Somalia, Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon.

What they did, of course, cost them their lives.

But what they did was so far above and beyond in order to get that medal, it wasn't even close.

I remember

General Downing came over and he goes, you guys need to put those guys in for the Medal of Honor.

Wow.

In Somalia.

So for him to get the Medal of Honor, I've never met Payne.

I'd love to meet him.

But for him to get the Medal of Honor and be alive at a Delta Force, dude, he probably earned it three or four times over.

And the unit, like I told you, the unit has been real bad about that.

Really bad when I was in.

Really bad.

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What was it like when you guys got back to the States?

Belden Bargewell had a talk with us.

You know, this is the guy, Mac visog legend.

We all just, and I remember I said something the other day.

I am glad Eldon Bargewell was on that roof.

There was one other officer, Gary Harrell, was there.

He was the troop commander.

Elden Bargewell was there.

I am glad he was there because of his experience.

The guy had seen, I mean, he's Mac V Sog legend.

He had a big talk with us and he said, look,

I want you guys to understand something.

You're coming back here.

You're going to go home.

You're going to be with your family, your wives.

You guys have done something

that's as high as it gets.

Need to understand they haven't.

So you have to come in and adapt to them.

They don't need to adapt to you.

What you've done for your country,

your country can't ask for more.

But you need to understand they haven't done that.

They haven't been through what you've been through.

And

you need to go home and adapt to that.

They don't need to adapt to you.

You need to adapt to them.

Remember, he had that talk with us.

I always hung on every word he'd ever say.

I mean, literally.

He would get us together and talk to us in the squadron classroom about whatever it might be.

And I would pay attention to every single word that guy said.

Like I told you, he's the guy before the mission that said, I'm looking at you guys.

I recognize, you know, everything is going to be okay.

You guys are going to be fine.

We're going to get him out of there.

Some of your, any, I remember him saying some of your buddies may get hurt, but they're going to be okay.

Man.

That's pretty fucking incredible, man.

Six minutes.

Six minutes, yeah, from when we landed to call Xville.

Wow.

In a prison.

In a prison.

Yep.

There's a lot of people along the way

like that doctor

that contributed stuff.

It's hard to measure how important that was, that intel that that doctor gave us.

It's hard to measure that.

Because we had this, okay, if he's not in that cell,

where is he at?

We got to start searching the prison for this guy.

For him to go in there and give us that solid

intelligence on where he's at, what status is, what kind of mental, you know, what kind of mind frame he's at, physically, what's he like.

That kind of stuff

was off the chart.

We talked to him, too.

He came back to the unit one time and briefed us.

Damn, man.

That's impressive.

Yeah, dude, I'll never forget it.

I can tell.

Yeah.

I get pretty choked up over it, as you can tell.

It's kind of hard to fight back the,

you know, the emotions because there's a few things along there that really bring them out.

That's just crazy, too, you know, the apex of your career right off the bat.

I know, dude.

You know.

A little over a year after, you know, finishing selection and finished it October

of, you know 88

eight well otc six months selection 88 october of 88 and then to follow you know fast forward a year or two months december 20th 89.

damn six months right now here's the thing remember i told you it was become critical thank god i went to selection that fall

because if i waited the spring I'd have missed the whole thing.

Think about that.

Remember I told you how that became critical?

That's why.

Because I, you know, initially my head was, I'll wait a year.

And then I just said, no, no, no, I'm going to go in the fall.

I'm going to do it.

Damn.

And everything just fell into place.

Where do you go from there?

Well, we went hunting scuds in Iraq.

I mean, which in itself was...

Awesome, but never to the point of Modela Prison.

How were you guys doing that?

Well, once again, Eldon Margwell

saw how things were schooling up in Kuwait because that developed over a period of time.

He had the foresight to go, you know, we need to be doing desert mobility operations.

You know, we need to be doing that.

So we went on training.

God, where did we go?

Was it Yuma?

No, I think it was 29 Palms.

Went to 29 Palms and did desert mobility operations.

Training up just in case.

We had no mission set.

We had no, this is what you're getting ready for.

He just said he had the foresight to go, you know what?

We may get in a situation with what's going on over there.

We may need to do desert mobility operations to operate behind enemy lines.

We need to go train on this.

And we went out, had a major exercise training.

You know, basically sorting out a lot of bugs, shaking a lot of the bugs out, you know, getting things sorted out so we knew what the hell we were doing.

Because we'd done some of it, but nothing like what we needed to be in order to go over and execute in a combat zone.

So we went out, shook over and went to 29 Palms.

If memory serves me correct, that's where we went.

And I could be wrong on that, but regardless, we went into an area out west and worked on desert.

mobility.

He had the foresight to do that.

He was the only squadron commander that did.

B squadron and C squadron didn't see that coming.

Schwartzkopf, who ended up, of course, being in charge of the coalition for Desert Storm, very anti-special ops.

Did you know that?

I didn't.

Yeah, very anti-based on his experience in Vietnam.

Kind of saw him as cowboys,

was not a fan of SF.

What flipped the script for him

was we had the Delta operators were his VIP protection detail.

Now, he had an AIC,

who was an Air Force

officer, but all the guys in the detail other than that were all Delta Force operators.

And he was so impressed with them and their professionalism that that left an impression on him in terms of what Delta was all about.

Then.

That was one piece of the puzzle.

The last piece of the puzzle is when the Iraqis started launching scuds in Israel.

And the Israelis were, I've been told this, and this has been confirmed.

I asked some people about this and he said, yeah, this is absolutely what happened.

The Israelis were on the airfields ready to launch into Iraq, which would have blown the coalition to pieces.

And they said, you guys can stand down.

We have our best people going in there to deal with these scuds.

And they said, who's that?

And they they go, Delta Force.

They said, and the Israelis stood down.

I'd heard that, and I went, and I asked some people in the Department of Defense, you know, up the food chain, said, Oh, yeah, that's absolutely 100% what happened.

So, combine our preparation

vis-a-vis Bargewell saying we need to get ready for desert mobility,

Schwarzkopf's impression of Delta based on

the VIP protection he had, and then

the decision from the command authority, the National Command Authority, to send in Delta to hunt for these Scuds.

That all lined up, and A Squadron was back in the, you know, back in the lead again.

How were you guys hunting Scuds?

Went in,

got there

in Saudi Arabia, way up close to the border, or

really close to the border.

Got our ducks in a row, went in via helicopter way deep into Iraq, up by the MSR main supply route.

And the theory was they were bringing these scuds down, the MSR.

They would branch off the MSR, set up, and then launch into Israel.

So what we did, we went up there,

find some places to hide, which was a bitch

because most of the train up there is as flat as a pool table.

So we went up, laid down, laid low during the day.

And when we go down, we would pull down south of the MSR, lay low,

down in some, you know, gullies and whatnot.

And then when it turned dark, we would go back up to the MSR, drop off sniper teams.

We'd withdraw back a little piece just before sunlight, we'd go back up, get the sniper teams, and come back down to our hide positions.

And we did that night after night after night.

Did you get any scuds?

Yeah, we did.

No,

at the very end.

At the very end.

There's a lot of intel after the fact that some of the scuds we saw were actually decoys.

But at the very end,

towards the, you know, at the end of our tuition, we were out there 19 days.

The group I was...

We were out there for 19

days doing it, yeah.

Before the ground invasion ever happened, we were up there for days before the ground invasion swept in.

Towards the very end, we got in a position where we're moving up the MSR.

We saw these vehicles kind of coming towards our position at an angle.

We stopped, kind of set ourselves up, did one of these numbers, got on binos and whatnot.

We go, hmm, this is some Iraqis.

We think this is, these guys are coming in with scuds, getting ready to set up.

enough they were

got on the horn to the air force they started bringing in f-16s the whole nine yards and started hammering our ass and they were they were there for hours and hammering them hours

and finally we went

we need to get out of here

because we just stirred up a hornet's nest We need to split.

So we took off, went back into our hide spot.

We were hoping to get a BDA bomb damage assessment so we'd go back up and see the debris and what happened.

Well, we never got it because the war basically came to an end.

Wow.

Yep.

So that happened right at the very end of our time there.

And then the war ended and basically everything was in a freeze.

We were just waiting to get X-Filled.

Damn.

How long was that after Panama?

Oh, man.

It was 91.

So 9089.

So a year and a half-ish.

I'd have to look at the dates, but I'm going to say a year and a half, maybe not quite two years.

What are you doing in the interim?

Training?

Yeah, training.

I remember I went to the Philippines for a little bit, did some VIP protection stuff over there, training and whatnot, doing the normal cycle.

You know what I mean?

The training cycle.

in the unit type of thing.

What happens after Iraq?

Come back.

Normal training cycle.

And then the next thing was Somalia, 93.

Fast forward couple years.

Big event.

What's that?

Big event.

Oh, yeah.

Well,

we had gotten this mission to go over there and hunt for a deeds and his henchmen, like C.

Squadron Oldman did.

And we got it.

And it was going to be a troop mission, I think.

And we had a shipbird commander in A Squadron.

I don't want to mention his name, but he was a shitbird.

And he gave away the mission to C Squadron.

And for whatever reason, God only knows why.

He gave away the mission to C Squadron.

And I think his theory was, well, it's a troop mission now.

If it bumps up to a squadron level mission, mission we'll get it back

obviously he was off his meds

because like that's ever going to happen well sure enough c squadron gets it they start rehearsing it and they go wait a minute that troop's not big enough for this what the hell and they bump it up to a squadron size mission and they end up deploying over to somalaya

I remember people were pretty butthurt over that.

I go, let me explain something to you.

That was actually fortunate.

You're, what what do you mean i go

just think about october 3rd with our leadership and how bad that would have went

and they went oh yeah you're right i go see squadrons leadership at the time

much more dialed in much more squared away than we were at the upper now i'm not talking about you know

you know troop level, team level.

I know what you're talking about.

You know what I mean?

Just the leadership.

Yeah, we're talking about this leadership up here.

We had losers.

And I just said, you know, it would have been much worse.

So did you get over there after that had happened?

Yeah, we went over after that to reinforce.

Shit, man.

Yeah, we went over after to reinforce.

We got there

two, three days later?

It wasn't long.

When October 3rd went down,

we got spun up and went over.

I mean, quick.

And we were there just, it was just a few days later.

Yeah, we rolled in to reinforce, got a debrief on what happened, you know, on the third, the whole nine yards.

We were there actually for,

yeah, the

ceremony of the guys who were killed.

Did you know those men?

Yeah, I knew all the unit guys.

Knew them all.

Didn't know the Rangers or the Task Force 160 guys, didn't know them, but I knew all the unit guys.

Absolutely.

100%.

How was that?

It was pretty spooky.

Yeah, it was pretty somber.

It was real somber, actually.

Yeah.

It was real somber.

Because it was a pretty horrific event.

Yeah.

And I know you talked to Tom and whatnot.

There's layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of stories that go along with that mission.

In terms of heroism

that probably should have got the Medal of Honor.

Guys

who honestly should have performed better, not really in the unit, but in the Ranger side.

You may have heard some of that.

I don't know.

There's a lot of nuances to that, to what happened that day.

A lot of nuances.

What's happened over time is some of that's been forgotten.

But when I was there, it was all fresh.

And I got it from the guys who were on the ground.

And they gave me a lot of information of stuff that went right and went wrong.

A lot of lessons learned.

Found out that

they were basically running those Hilos,

they were running them as if they were doing them in low light at night.

But instead of looking at it from, hey, wait a minute, we're up here in daylight.

They can easily see where we're at and what we're doing.

We need to change our tactics in terms of the Hilo operations to better reflect what's happening during the day.

But they were doing it as if it was at night.

Damn.

There was a lot of lessons learned out of that.

It was a pretty,

I wouldn't say pretty, it was a very horrific event.

Yeah.

I did a

very extensive interview with Tom Satterly, who's a really good friend friend of mine now.

And

like his account was just.

Yep.

I mean, just fucking insane.

Yeah.

I mean,

you know the deal.

I mean, you talked to Tom at length about it.

I mean, it was horrific.

And

it's hard to

really grasp.

the magnitude or the level of what actually happened at that time and the impact it had on not only the unit, but the Ranger battalion.

I mean, it was really kind of hard to, at this point, because we're so far down the road now,

you know,

decades now down the road.

During that time, it was, you know, it really made the organization.

I'm assuming the same with the Rangers, but certainly Delta really had to take a hard look in the mirror.

And what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong.

Stuff as simple as why are we wearing Pro Tech helmets?

Why are we not wearing Kevlar helmets?

Why are we not wearing helmets that are protected?

There was a guy in C Squadron that was killed off a ricochet.

I don't know if you knew that or not.

I didn't.

Yeah, he was killed off a ricochet off the wall.

They're moving down the street.

And sure enough,

he got killed and went right through his Pro Tech.

If he'd have been wearing a Kevlar helmet or something protective, probably would have saved his life.

Damn.

Running around with black body armor.

What's that all about?

You're in desert fatigues with black body armor on.

So the unit had to take a real hard look in the mirror, and there was some real serious lessons learned out of that.

Some real PTSD out of that.

Yeah.

You knew what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

I mean, some major PTSD.

Yeah, pretty, that was a horrific event.

Very horrific.

And then I told you, I got over there just in time to talk to a real good friend of mine who kind of gave me his data dump of what happened.

And then I said, hey, I'll see you tomorrow.

I never saw him again.

He was killed that night.

How was he killed?

That mortar round landed right behind him.

He was outside the hangar.

And I remember hearing him boom.

Because we were in a separate hangar.

You know, very close, but

separate.

A squadron.

And then C squadron, and the Rangers were still in this primary hangar where they'd been.

And he was outside talking to guys.

And a mortar round landed right behind him.

And they'd been launching mortar rounds throughout the time they were there, but they'd always landed down by the beach, way over him.

They'd never really be able to vector it in

where they'd hit in and around the hangars till that.

night.

And around landed right behind him.

Like all the guys, as far as I know, all the guys he was talking to all got seriously injured, like seriously injured.

But they all survived.

And he was killed immediately.

And this was a good friend of yours.

Oh, yeah, a really good friend of mine.

Really good friend of mine.

Is that the first friend you lost?

No.

Six months prior to that,

our mutual friend, we used to shoot at competition together, pistol competition.

Me, him, and another guy.

Our mutual friend, six months prior, got killed in a parachute accident.

Damn.

And then six months later, fast forward, and my other buddy's killed.

And I'd never gotten over that.

How do you deal with loss?

Just,

you know,

internalize it.

Compartmentalize it.

Compartmentalize it.

And sometimes it just really comes to the surface.

You just saw a few minutes ago when the Medela Prison talk.

It's just hard to keep it suppressed.

But yeah, that was a, I'll never forget that year, 1993.

I'll never forget it.

Lost two of my good friends in a matter of six-month span.

Never forget it.

You know, and I wish I'd have been there on October 3rd to help those guys out.

There's no doubt we'd have made a difference with C-Squadron.

No doubt.

Because here's what

We got over there

and we said, there was a lesson learned having Rangers out on the outer perimeter

on the roadblocks.

And I don't want to rein on the Rangers too much.

That's a time for somebody else to talk,

you know, somebody else for you to interview.

But

as soon as we landed, C Squadron's like, okay, Rangers, you guys are out.

A squadron's going to be on the outer perimeter.

What you guys were doing

in terms terms of security, now A Squadron's doing.

That, like, as soon as we hit the ground, that was decided.

And then,

because at that point, it was all about getting Mike Durant,

who was being held, you know, hostage by the Somalis.

It was all about getting him.

And we were, dude, you want to talk about

ready to hammer people.

We would fly over at night and we were begging

begging for somebody to shoot at us because we'd have come down on them like the pouring rain i can imagine oh man the dude you want to talk about out for blood

and i i've heard scuttlebutt it was the ambassador or the

the assistant ambassador whatever went and talked to a deed's people

about mike durant and they ended up giving him up as you know they they let him go.

But I think he told him, he said, you think October 3rd was bad?

Because the smallies got hammered.

I mean, they lost a lot of people.

C Squadron and the Rangers and Task Force 160,

dude, they went through them.

I mean, they hammered them big time.

I've heard 45 to 1 kill ratio.

Wow.

That's what I've heard for every.

45.

45 to 1.

That's what I heard.

Because it's interesting, sad, but interesting.

Delta, including my buddy, he was killed,

including him.

Delta lost six operators.

Rangers lost six Rangers.

Task Force 160 lost six guys.

Six, six, and six were killed.

Over there.

But I want to say it was either the ambassador or the assistant ambassador was negotiating with Adid's people and said, you need to give him up

because the next time they come in here, it's going to make October 3rd look like a walk in the park.

Because it would have been, I mean, it would have been brutal.

Yeah.

Because we were out for blood.

And sure enough, they gave him up.

I remember seeing him carry him on to the bird.

I remember that.

We were lined up and they had to carry him on a stretcher onto the bird for him to get Exfield back to the States.

Where did you go after Somalia?

Back home.

I'm trying to remember what I did.

I went over and did a stint as an OTC instructor, and I think it wasn't that long after.

Pretty sure, well, I take that back now.

Bosnia.

Yeah, Bosnia.

That's where I went.

What were you guys doing over there?

VIP protection.

Commander of S-4.

Commander of S-4, who was Shinseki.

I don't know if you knew who that is or not.

General Shinseki.

Vietnam vet,

kind of an Asian guy, lost part of his foot from a mine in Vietnam.

We liked him.

We got along with the guy great.

We really liked working for him.

He was a really, really good guy to work for.

Fast forward,

he was hooked in with the Democrats.

I remember Joe Biden, when he was still a senator, came over and had a sit-down and went out to dinner with Shinseki.

Because from what I understand, Shinseki's daughter, and I could be off base on this, but Shinsecki's daughter was an intern in his office.

So he was tight with the Democrats.

Fast forward, Obama gets in office.

Biden's his VP.

They put Shinseki in charge of the VA.

Then all that shit comes out where, you know,

soldiers and whatnot are not getting treated the way they should, and Shinsecki gets shown the door.

And I remember, you know, people asking me about it, I said, you know what, we loved working for the guy, but he was ass clown for hooking up with the Democrats.

And I haven't heard anything from him since.

But he was a great guy to work for.

We really liked him.

Yeah, we went over and

did VIP protection for 90 days.

I did.

It was, we rotated.

You know, I mean, other guys from the unit did it, but I went over, my team went over.

We had two or three teams doing it, but we did VIP protection for Senseaki.

What were your other Hilo crashes?

All right, so the first one was Panama, that six months after just cause.

That was the worst.

Second one was we were doing desert mobility training, and we were in an Air Force Hilo before they did away with them.

Air Force, I want to say shortly after that, just completely got out of the Hilo business.

Thank God.

But we were in the back, we had our vehicle, Pensgower, in the back of the bird, and it was, you know, tied down.

The crew chiefs had tied it down.

And we did a landing in the desert.

And for whatever reason, for the life of me, I don't know why the guy did it.

The pilots did a rolling landing in the desert.

Instead of just sitting it down and stopping,

dropping the ramp and letting us get out of there.

They sat down and they were doing a rolling landing.

Well, sure enough, I mean, it's a desert, bro.

It hits a gully or hits a you know, and pulls, it jams the nose wheel right back up in the bird.

So now, all of a sudden, everybody gets jeered to the front.

Thank God, nobody was standing behind the Pens Gower, our vehicle, because it got slammed up against the bulkhead because

the crew chiefs had strapped it down wrong.

They'd strapped it down where you know

it would it was limited to go that way, but not that way,

and it smacked right up against the bulkhead.

If somebody, we were all sitting down, thank God.

If somebody would have happened to have been standing behind it, they'd have been crushed.

Damn,

and that one

was a crash, but it really wasn't.

I mean, it technically checks the block for a crash, you know, but the first one and the third one could have been fatal like that.

Third one.

Task Force 160 is down and we're training on Fort Bragg.

Little Birds, Blackhawks, A Squadron.

We're hitting the mount site on Bragg.

I think we hit a site out somewhere else and we had a follow-on mission to the mount site on Fort Bragg,

which me and everybody in A Squadron knew like the back of our hands.

I could probably drive a schematic to this day.

I mean, we just knew it by the back of our hands.

Some of the TF-160 pilots didn't know it as well as us.

So

I was on a little bird.

We're coming down,

kind of let's say the east side of the mouse site, right?

We're coming down to land,

right?

Well, we were actually supposed to come in and take a left down this street and sit down.

Well, the bird I was on overshot the street.

Well, instead of just sitting down, he starts to peel off like this.

Right underneath black hawks, they're coming down.

Right.

And I'm there.

And I knew it.

And I was the right front on the pod.

Four-man team.

I was the right front on the pod.

And the bird's doing this.

So I'm the closest to the ground.

I knew immediately what was going on.

As soon as he started to do that, I knew where we were at on the mount site.

I knew where we were supposed to be and I knew where the black hawks were going to be landing.

And as soon as he did that, I immediately right up there and I saw that bird coming down and I was like, and it's one of those things that happens.

I mean, what are you going to do?

Yeah.

And the rotor wash hits us.

If he'd have kept that attitude, we'd have went right in the ground.

And I was, I would have, I would have, I was right in the front of the bird.

I would have been the first thing that hit the ground.

Without question, it would have been fatal.

Without question.

To his credit, he leveled the bird out and we plowed into the ground flat.

That rotor wash kicked us down.

I talked to those guys later.

They saw us doing that and they were like, whoa.

And that bird kicked up.

The Blackhawk kicked up.

The rotor wash kicked us down.

And to his credit,

he flattened out and

we hit the ground or the sand because it's a real sandy area right outside the mount site.

We hit the sand flat.

Yeah.

And

when we got off,

the pods were level with the ground.

The bench seats that we were sitting on were level with the ground.

The struts were completely buried in the ground.

Damn.

And I remember

by that time, it was my third crash, and I was kind of like,

for real?

Don't fly with Larry Vickers.

Oh, yeah.

And it became a joke in the unit, dude.

It became a joke.

And I remember a guy was my

behind me.

I can't remember who it was.

And I was a team leader, was behind me.

He started to get up.

I stopped him because the rotors were still going.

I said, yeah, I stopped him.

I pulled him down and stopped him from getting up till the rotor stopped.

We got up, got on the other side.

The other guys were fine, shook up.

I said, let's go.

Let's go to the target building and i remember one of the guys said later dude he goes i was done i was admin i didn't want to do i go no dude we're going to the target building we came in you got in late that the damn building was cleared and all that

and they they didn't know where we went they lost track they were like

you know where's g team at

we show up And I said, yeah, we went down.

We crashed.

They were like, whoa.

And then we came back to

the compound and went back in the A squadron classroom.

And then the pilots all came in and we just had a big hot wash on what happened.

So the first one, by the grace of God, wasn't fatal.

And the third one, by the grace of God, wasn't fatal.

Very easily, both of them could have been fatal, just like that.

So then you go to OTC.

Yeah, OTC instructor.

How was that for you?

I loved it

because the analogy I had made is

maybe not a good analogy but it was kind of like being a made man

if you are at a standard that they want you to go train the new guys coming at an organization that is that's like you're a made man

that's i i to me that was a big deal

and i'm sure all the guys who ever did it would agree tom Anybody who's ever been an OTC instructor would agree.

I mean, you're in Delta Force.

You have

established yourself of such a caliber and such a performer.

They want you to go train the new guys coming in out of selection that I really,

that to me was a big deal.

I, you know, really, really high on that.

I wore that as a badge of honor.

I mean, how would you treat them?

The students?

Yeah.

Are they candid?

Totally professional.

Totally professional.

I wasn't a dickhead to them, but I didn't cut them any slack either.

100% professional all the time.

All the time.

I wasn't a Nazi or anything, but

I didn't cut them any slack.

Because I knew firsthand what was needed in that squadron.

When they go across the hall, I knew firsthand what was needed.

what we needed out of these guys.

So if they weren't cutting the mustard or they didn't have the right attitude or whatever, I mean, I didn't cut them A slack.

But at the same time, I wasn't a dickhead to them either.

What's the instructor-student ratio?

Well, it varies because of the OTC class.

Remember the one class we had nine?

We probably had a dozen instructors.

So we had more than one instructor per student.

You know what I mean?

It really varies depending on the OTC class that comes out of selection.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Is this where you wrap up your career?

Well, I went back to A-squadron as team leader.

Nothing super eventful.

I end up,

what the problem is for me, what ended up happening was all these injuries.

All that stuff really added up.

And

it took a major physical toll toll on me.

By the time I became a troop sergeant,

because I was a team leader twice after coming out of OTC, before I went to OTC as a team leader, as an instructor, and I come back after being an OTC instructor, I was a team leader, and then I'm coming up to be a troop sergeant, A1 troop sergeant.

And I was A1 troop sergeant for a little while.

Physically, though, I just couldn't do it.

I couldn't do it.

I wasn't.

I knew I wasn't cutting it.

I just couldn't do it because of the toll that all this stuff had taken on me.

Turns out

I had two bone spurs in my lower back pushing on my spinal cord.

And we finally got to,

and I just knew

I knew I wasn't right.

And we finally got to the point where we're going to be doing some stuff with the SAS and we're going to have to go up.

Caving ladders.

You got it.

Caving ladder.

And I knew I wouldn't be able to do it.

I knew it.

And that's when I went to the chain of command, squadron chain of command.

I said, I got to, I'm going to have to step down.

Damn.

I'll bet that was fucking hard.

Oh, dude, it sucked.

It sucked.

Cause

the sky was the limit for me in that organization.

I could have eventually been CSM for sure.

No question about it being a squadron sergeant major.

No question.

No question.

That would have happened without question.

I'll bet you got a ton of respect over there, too.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah,

that was a tough, real tough call.

What did they say?

They said, we understand.

I said, I just can't.

I know I'm not right.

I know I'm not right.

I just know.

And I said, I can't, in good conscience, stay in this position as a troop sergeant major.

knowing I can't do the job physically.

I can't do it.

So I did it.

Normally, it's a two-year stint.

I did it for a year.

And then I stepped down.

I stepped down.

Is that when you've retired?

No, went up to weapons RD,

which is where the HK-416 story comes about.

Perfect.

Let's take a quick break and then we'll get into that.

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Thank you.

Let's get back to the show.

All right, Larry, we're back from the break.

We're getting ready to get into the 416, but I just reviewed my notes real quick, and I just saw a little blurb that says naked in a hotel oh yeah what the hell is this okay

so

this is when at the very end of my career i did my time up in r d weapons r d 416 we'll get to that well i ended up going back down to otc to be another otc instructor actually for my second time This is, I want to say, when me and Tom were instructors together.

And this is right at the end before I get out of the Army.

And we're up at Quantico

using the FBI HRT shoot house because our shoot house, this is OTC students we're up there with.

Our shoot house is down for maintenance.

They're rebuilding it.

So we go up there.

Well, I'm going to go back before the rest of the cadre and the students head back.

I'm going to go back to start out processing.

You know, I mean, I'm putting in my paperwork, all that jazz.

So I get up.

We have our hotel room.

Each one of us has our room to ourselves.

The instructors, I'm pretty sure the students were two to a room, but

I get up naked,

right?

And I go to the door and it's the day I'm checking out.

And I'm used to a USA Today.

This is all pre-internet, you know, pre-Phones.

A USA Today right in front of my door.

And I opened up the door and they used to do one of those deals.

The day you're checking out,

you wouldn't get a hook or you wouldn't get a newspaper.

You know, up till the day you're checking out, you'd get a newspaper, but the actual day you're checking out, you wouldn't get a newspaper, which was bullshit.

Well, I'm half awake.

All right, I opened up the door.

I noticed there's no.

USA Today, but right next to me, the door right in front of the store over here, there is.

so I go to reach over and grab it cha-chink

the door closes

and dude I went from half awake to full awake like that

and I was like oh my god

I'm out in this hallway and I'm naked

And dude, my heart's racing.

I'm like, what?

What am I going to do?

So

I do one of these scans.

I look down the end of the hall and I see curtain, right?

You know, there's a window at the end of the hall curtain.

I go, okay,

I'm going to go down,

which is idiotic in and of itself, but I'm going to go down, pull a curtain down, wrap it around my body, and then I'll go down to the front desk and get a new key.

Yeah, I know.

Well, I go down there and I go to grab that curtain and dude, that curtain's on there, homes.

There is no pulling that thing down.

That's completely out of the question.

So right beside me is the stairs.

So I go down to the stairs.

I think it was third floor

or second floor.

I can't remember.

But I went down to the bottom of the stairs and I can see through the

window at the bottom, the door at the bottom.

I'm like, right there is the gym,

the hotel gym, and there's towels.

Like, awesome.

What didn't dawn on me until later, I would have needed a key to get in the gym anyway.

So, you you know what i mean but here's the problem that didn't matter that was trumped by the fact that right there was the gym with towels that i could have covered myself up with

right here was the continental breakfast area

oh yeah

nice yeah that's got people in it

so i'm like

Well, I recognize one of the guys I work with, Bruce Goss, is in there.

He's backed to me.

He's eating breakfast and whatnot.

I open up the door.

I go, Bruce,

Bruce.

And he's like,

one of these deals.

I go, Bruce.

He turns around.

I go.

So he comes over.

I go, dude, I locked myself out of my room.

I'm naked.

And he's like, whoa.

And I said, yeah.

And he goes, what room you in?

And I go, whatever, 204 or whatever.

And he goes, here, take my key.

I'm in room 315.

Go to my room.

I'll go to the front desk and get you a new key.

And then I'll meet you in my room.

I go, cool.

So I go up to that hall, you know, I go up to the room and or the hallway he's on or whatever it was, you know, second, third floor.

And I run down to his room and go in.

Nobody saw me.

Amazingly.

Because this is breakfast time, dude.

Yeah.

So I go down there.

I'm hanging out.

Sure enough, he comes in.

He's got my key.

And he said, yeah, I went up to the front desk and said, hey, I need a key for room 204.

Why?

Well, trust me,

I need a key for room 204 to the gal at the desk.

And she's like, oh, okay, here you go.

He gives me the key.

I grab a towel, wrap it around myself.

I walk down with the towel right down to the elevator.

I open up, get on the elevator.

There's a dude on the elevator standing there, a business guy with his briefcase.

I'm standing there.

I look up at him and I go, yeah, dude, it's pretty much what you think it is.

And then he didn't say a word.

He was just looking at me weird.

And I got out and went down to my room.

Amazingly, nobody actually physically saw me naked.

Nice.

Nice.

Oh, shit.

Yeah.

Good stuff, man.

Larry Vickers naked in a nice

hotel room.

And I, you know, that story's been told so many times.

And it's,

it's like, you know, we all have those nightmares about being caught in public naked.

And I've actually lived it.

Yep.

Yep.

All right.

416.

Okay.

So I go up into weapons RD, research and development.

I got small arms on my plate.

You know, I've got a guy who's doing long guns, snipers, you know, whatnot, and I'm doing assault weapons.

I'm doing pistols, assault rifles, whatnot.

First thing I kick off with is a new pistol,

a new service pistol to replace our 1911s.

And I had the idea, you know, I need to talk to HK about this

because I'd had enough interaction with HK to know, you know, how they build guns, how they test them.

They're without peer.

And I thought, you know, I need to talk to them about building us a new service pistol, building us an HK 1911.

So I line up a trip, go over to Germany.

And I meet with them and I meet with the CEO and I go, hey, this is, you know, what we got in mind, yada, yada, yada.

And they're like,

I don't know.

Yeah, maybe we'll look at it.

you know what i mean they weren't they were on the bubble well i happened to be in the ceo's office ernst mauck and i looked up on the wall and he had a schematic of an m4 with a g36 style gas system

and i go what's that and he said oh that's a concept that we're kicking around the idea on is putting a g36 gas system in an m4

And I go, really?

Why is that?

And he goes, well, we've read about the Crane report.

I don't know if you've ever heard of it or not.

Crane report where some SEALs had issues with high-round counts on M4s, and we feel like that we can address it with a different gas system.

And I went,

huh.

Well, I knew in the unit, we had the requirement for a reduced size M4 carbine style rifle

because

for CQB,

close quarters battle, the M4

at times is too long.

It's just simply too big.

We cut our teeth on the MP5, which is a real easy gun to maneuver.

Everybody loves for CQB.

Problem is it's basically a big 9mm pistol.

So if I step outside and I shoot at somebody down, you know,

down a street or whatever, I'm shooting at them with a big nine millimeter pistol.

So you know, we want our, we want to be bringing the 556 into combat.

We want to bring it to the battle.

That means the M4 carbine, which means a gun that's a certain size, which means in certain confined spaces, it's just simply too big.

And they looked at different guns.

They looked at the G36C, which is a compact G36, the SIG 552 Delta.

I was looking at these, and none of them really cut the mustard.

Also looked at smaller M4 variants, shorter barrels and whatnot.

They had fleas in terms of the gas system.

It was just not applicable.

If the barrel length is shorter than 14.5 inches, it's just not a good mix.

Has fleas.

fleas.

I knew enough about what we needed,

and I knew enough about weapons design to know this is very possibly the answer.

So I said, Ernst, what would it take

for

that gun to become a reality?

He goes, we need a partner.

We need an end-user partner.

That's willing to partner up with us and give us feedback for what we're doing right and doing wrong and what we can bring to the, you know, bring the market.

I said,

okay.

What's that consist of?

He goes, we would need some basically

guinea, and I'm using this term guinea pig guns to work on it.

So I go back to the unit.

Three squadron sergeant majors are in there.

And I go, okay, here's the deal.

HK is looking at doing an improved M4 style rifle with a different gas system.

What that's going to do for us is that's going to give us a gun that's significantly smaller, but still very reliable.

And they go, okay.

And they go, what do they want?

I said, all they want is basically guns to modify and work on to test this theory.

And that's it.

They don't want any money.

I go, no, they don't want any money at all.

They just need guns that we give to them on loan.

They're going to give them back.

They're going to modify them, test them, and basically give them back to us for us to use them and give give them feedback.

And the squadron sergeant majors are like, there's no downside to this.

Yeah, 100%.

So we run it up the chain.

We're going to give them X amount of guns.

I can't remember what it was.

It wasn't that many, but it wasn't that, but all of a sudden, SOCOM goes, stop.

We don't know if legally we can loan these guns to them.

And right then I thought, oh, man, we're screwed.

This is over.

The SOCOM socomp lawyers are going to kill this i thought we're done sure enough they come back and go good to go i was blown away i couldn't believe it now you can do that because they're u.s government property you can legally do it

basically transfer it to them and they'll transfer it back i i still to this day can't believe it damn

so we sent them the guns they modify them with the g36 style gas system sent them back to the unit guns run like a champ i mean from day one the 416 ran like a champ.

They needed input, though, on the handguard rail system.

They need just, you know, it needed some refinement.

So we sent them back, give them, you know, and then they finally start making their own guns from scratch, not just modifying our guns that we supply them.

They start making guns from scratch, prototypes, still pre-production prototypes.

The last nut to crack was the rail system.

Because the way the G36 gas system works, you really can't take it out the front.

You have to take it out the back, which means in order to get to the gas system to maintain it, you have to take the hand guard off.

Well, we needed a free-float hand guard that we could take on and off and retain zero for rail-mounted lasers.

That was like the stumbling block.

We're like, dude, this could be a problem.

How are you going to do this rail

that you can unbolt, take off, maintain the gas system, put it back on, and the laser maintains zero?

Yeah.

And I was like, man, I don't know if they're going to be able to do this.

This might be too much.

Sure enough, it's HK.

I mean, these are the people, remember, the Germans got us to the moon.

Sure enough, they come up with the rail system and we tested it.

out at gun site as a matter of fact they came out with desert testing we did desert testing out there.

We came and did the, did attended the testing with them and tested the rail coming on and off and retaining zero with a laser.

No shit.

Yep.

And now that rail system obviously has been hugely successful in the 416.

The other people like Geisley's copied it in terms of how his rail goes on and is attached.

Yeah.

I mean, I use the 416 a lot.

Love that weapon.

Yeah, and it's been a huge success now

really

it was a big shot in the arm for hk

big shot in the arm now the german military is using a variant of them it's now their current it replaced the g36 or is replacing the g36 a variant of the hk 416 huge success huge success as far as i know

I could be wrong, but it's yet to lose a trial anywhere in the world.

Wow.

Doesn't it?

The French adopted it.

The Norwegians adopted it.

Now the Germans have, it's yet to lose any kind of a service rifle trial anywhere in the world, as far as I know.

Wow.

That's pretty badass, man.

Yeah, huge success.

I did not know you were behind that.

Yeah, really?

It was a partnership with me and Ernst Mauck.

You take either one of us out of the equation and the gun wouldn't exist.

We were the parents of the 416, Ernst Mauck on HK side and me on the end user side.

That is badass.

That's badass.

I love that weapon.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's a great gun.

Fantastic weapon.

So when did you get out?

I got out really ended 03.

Technically

beginning of 04, but I was on terminal leave.

So might as well say that, you know, very beginning of 04, I got out.

Got out from 04.

I went to work for HK for a while and then I left.

I I went back to the unit as

a contract instructor, OTC instructor, for about a year.

And then I went and worked for another government agency, and then I went one of my own with Vickers Tactical.

What government agency?

TOSA.

I don't know if you've ever heard of them or not.

Yeah, they were a technical operations support activity.

And it was a GWAT spin-off thing.

where they were just throwing money.

You remember, you know, during GWAT, they were just throwing money like there's no tomorrow.

What were you doing there?

Just helping set up testing and stuff.

Okay.

Didn't like it?

No, I was pretty weak.

And then you started Vickers Tactical.

Yeah, I started Vickers Tactical.

Created an entire tactical empire.

Yeah.

I mean,

holy shit, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's went pretty well until recently.

Well,

let's...

Before we get to recently, let's, I mean, where did you start it?

What was the premise at the very beginning?

Training.

People reaching out to me for training.

Hey, will you come do this class?

Will you come do that class?

And it was growing.

And I thought, you know, this could go take off.

And I had other people saying, hey, dude, you need to make a go of this.

And

what really gave me the ability to do it is my military retirement.

I knew I had my mortgage covered from my military retirement.

And that's, if I didn't have that, I don't know that I would have had the balls to do it.

But I knew my military retirement covered the mortgage and then some.

And that gave me the initiative and the balls to do it.

What was it like for you training civilians after coming out of the

Premier South unit?

Well,

the unit Delta is so unique in that regard.

It's really hard to compare that.

You have to set them aside.

Yeah.

I mean, you really.

You were able to do that, though.

There's a lot of guys to get into the training game

after service.

I mean, I was one of them.

And,

I mean, it's hard to

switch your mindset.

It took me a while.

I was pretty rough around the edges,

as you can imagine.

You know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I do.

I was pretty rough around the edges.

I had to really adjust my train of thought.

It got to the point, though, as I did it, the more I liked training civilians.

Because a couple of reasons.

One, because they were paying for it.

In many cases, they were much better students.

They would pay attention and apply themselves much better because they were the ones writing the check

versus Mill LE, somebody else, you know, the taxpayers writing their check and are like, with exceptions.

I mean, you get some mill LE guys which are rock stars.

Yeah, I know what you're saying.

But you know what I'm saying?

You know, what I found.

If you don't mind, I mean, if I share a little bit, what I found was,

you know,

I've really like doing these all-women's courses.

Really?

Yeah, because the ego is fucking gone.

I mean, you get, you know, you get guys coming in and they're like, oh, I've been shooting since I was eight.

And it's like, cool, you're probably shooting wrong since you were eight.

And

I saw like a lot of people that

it's like they regret not going to war.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and instead of just learning, they have to

they have to throw their ego into it and

compensate for whatever they feel like they're missing out on in life.

And I started doing these all-women's courses, and what I found was like there was a lot of

battered women who had been raped and sexually abused and beat on by their husbands or their boyfriends or whatever.

And they would come in and

I mean, just like terrified, just to rack a pistol slide.

And

I mean it,

I got them pretty damn proficient in one day.

I mean, shooting good groups at 10, 15 yards.

And to watch a woman that has been

through any type of abuse that I just listed off, you know, very, very shy, very timid,

scared.

And then to watch them leave with that empowerment, like, I know how to work this fucking gun and I know how to use it.

And

that was very rewarding for me.

That was the most rewarding

experiences that I had in the firearms industry was watching women leave those courses knowing that that's not going to happen again to them.

Cool.

But

like I said, I think, and they were great students because They didn't have any egos.

They were just there to learn, to learn firearms proficiency, specifically in pistols.

And it's really like, it's really a fucking cool, rewarding experience to see that empowerment.

But, but so you, who were you training?

Oh, man, everybody.

I mean, across the spectrum.

Some women's classes, not many.

I have women sprinkled in my classes, but by and large, it was men.

A lot of civilians.

Some mill sprinkled and a fair amount of LE.

Not so much much LE agencies, but individual LE officers in my classes, two, three here, one or two, you know what I mean?

So really kind of across the spectrum.

Mainly pistol, also carbine, but really it boiled down to mainly pistol.

That's really where it ultimately boiled down to

mainly pistol training.

And you know one thing I'm kind of known in the 1911 world.

building 1911s and teaching people how to build them and all that jazz.

But one of my specialty classes became the 1911 class, became a 1911 specific class, teaching people how to use them, how to detail disassemble them, how to maintain them, how to troubleshoot them.

Net, man, I did that class more than I, times more than I can count.

Man, I remember watching it when I was getting started and I was just like, fuck, man, I hope one day.

Maybe one day I can get to that level.

And, you know, I never did, but,

I mean, it was, it was truly inspiring.

I mean, thanks.

What was your first product that you developed other than the 416?

The sling with Blue Force Gear.

That's what I use, man.

I have that on all my AOs.

God bless you.

Yeah, that's.

I'm not bullshitting you.

Like, I fucking love that sling.

Yeah, that's been, was my first product.

Absolute Grand Slam home run.

Scale one to 10, it's a 15.

It's been a huge success for me and Blue Force Gear.

Close personal friends with the owner, Ashley Burns said.

I mean, that was the first product and just set the standard.

Set the standard.

Second would be the Glock Tangled Down parts.

Jeff Caholt Tangledown, personal friend of mine.

Way back in the day, I started seeing different things that was needed for the Glock.

One is an

enhanced magazine release, and that was the first Glock part I came out with.

Slightly extended with rounded edges.

No shit.

That was you.

Yep.

That particular one.

Now, there's other ones on the market, but the Vickers tactical tangle down one, yeah, came from me.

And we molded, you know, we set up the mold and did it.

Now we got, I don't even know how many SKUs now.

Slide stop, slide racker, base plates, a lot of different SKUs for the Glock.

And that's been another Grand Slam home run.

We've been doing those for quite a while.

We've expanded out into other pistols, but the Glock rules the world.

Yep.

Glocks rule the world.

So that's been by far our biggest seller.

Next,

been really good friends with Paul Buffoni of Brival Company.

Been a brand ambassador for him.

He sponsored my YouTube channel for years.

Product development with him.

Still on board with him.

Great, great guy.

One of the best people in the entire firearms industry.

Fast forward, and I hooked up with James Rupley with Vickers Guide.

And that's been another Grand Slam home run.

We kicked it off 2015.

And now we got,

Scott was asking me now, I think about 11 titles somewhere in there.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

You know what I mean?

It's been a home run with James.

He does the photography and he's co-author with me as well.

Lives here in Nashville.

No shit.

Yeah.

Sure does.

And you got to link me in with the Bravo Company guy.

Oh, no worries, dude.

Damn things.

I can't find find them.

Where the hell do you even get them?

I can't find them.

What do you need?

Do you need a gun or?

I need an AR.

Oh, yeah.

I got you.

I mean, I got a lot of ARs, but I don't have a Bravo AR.

Okay.

I'll hook you up.

Yeah, man.

I'll tie you in.

Cool.

Please do.

I'm being serious.

Yeah, no, no worries.

I got you covered.

I'll hook in.

But,

man, you have really crushed that game.

Yeah.

I mean, you are like the guy when it comes to all of that stuff.

I appreciate it.

How long did it take you to grow it into what it is?

15 years.

15 years?

Yeah.

How long has the company been alive?

05

to now.

But to get it really, 20 years now, but to get it really where it was hitting on its all-cylinders, 15 years.

What's your favorite part about it?

Is it innovating or is it training?

Both equally.

I would say both equally.

Yeah, I'd say 50-50 mix.

How many people do you think you've trained?

Oh, I did a math on it a few years ago, and it was over 5,000.

Holy shit.

Yeah, over 5,000.

I did the math.

I sat down and conservatively, you know, I did was conservative.

I didn't, you know, blow it out of proportion, but okay, X number of classes over X number of years, X number of students.

Let me, you know, yada, yada, yada, and 5,000 students.

Wow, man.

Wow.

That is a lot of people, man.

Mainly civilians, bro.

Mainly civilians.

Yeah.

And then some of the civilians multiple times.

Some of them will come back for the same class.

Yeah.

Over and over.

Pretty cool.

Pretty cool.

And so now you're in.

Now you're in a little bit of hot water.

Oh, yeah.

My

can't talk a lot about it, but I want to talk about how it came about.

Okay.

Because it's still ongoing, like a lot of legal, you know, the deal.

Oh, I know the deal.

Yeah.

So

it came about, my greatest asset

became my greatest weakness.

Meaning my ability to hyper-focus on firearms, really delve in,

really just absorb everything,

you know, that comes with firearms, allowed me, it led me down a pretty dangerous path.

Like I started, you know, violating rules, laws, regulations, and whatnot, knowingly doing so.

In order to feed this demon

over here, I started doing stuff over here that I shouldn't have been doing.

And knew it, but you know what?

Felt like I'd never get caught.

It felt like I'd never get caught.

And sure enough, August 2021, I got caught.

What happened?

ATF rolled in the house in

North Carolina, Huntersville, North Carolina, rolled in and seized my guns.

And it was a trickle-down effect from somebody else.

And it's like I said, it's still ongoing.

It's still a sticky mess.

So I can't really go into details.

But it wasn't me specifically.

It was a trickle-down.

And I was down the food chain.

And they rolled in on me and had me dead to rights.

Damn.

So I ended up.

I remember reading about this shit.

Yeah.

I thought it was all, I was like, it's probably just some fucking energy.

No, it was real.

It was real.

Unfortunately, too real.

Damn.

October 23, I pled guilty, two counts.

Counts of what?

illegal importation of a firearm and violating an Obama executive order.

And both of them are ongoing.

I mean, both of them.

You're talking October 23.

My attorney said, you most likely will not be sentenced in 2024.

I go, really?

He goes, I'm serious.

Now he's saying you may not be sentenced till 2026 or even 2027.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

So now

really what boils down to is I talked to him at length, as you can imagine, and I could have fought it, almost certainly would have lost.

Almost certainly.

He said, Larry,

it would cost you a tremendous amount of money.

A tremendous amount of money.

It might even bankrupt me.

And it would just drag my family through hell, even more hell than they've already been through.

So

I went ahead and pled.

A couple things.

We're actively pursuing a pardon,

and we're also actively pursuing getting my gun rights back.

Because you've probably heard a little bit about that.

Have you heard about it?

The AG, Pam Bondi.

You heard about that, Sam?

No, I haven't.

She's came out recently, and I'm talking within the last couple of weeks, and I'm paraphrasing here.

My attorney would be, you know, better able to relay this, saying that if you're a nonviolent felon on a case-by-case basis, you can get your gun rights back.

And you appealed directly to the AG's office to do so.

Have you done that?

And we're in the process of doing it right now, getting our paperwork.

It'll be done.

What's that?

When will it be done?

The paperwork soon, because it's really not that extensive.

I got to get three letters.

I got my three letters lined up.

One's from Kirk Muse.

And so I've got a couple other guys lined up, officers I was in Delta with.

So I got those three letters, and then we're going to combine the package together and send it in.

We're trying to, I'm really casting the net out.

And I was telling Scott on the way, trying to find anybody that might be able to get us in because what we don't want is we submit it and it just goes into a black hole.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's what we're, that's what we're worried about.

We're trying to prevent that.

If there's any way to at least get it, we know it's going to get in front of the AG or get where it needs to go.

That's what we're trying to do.

Pardon paperwork, same thing.

That's much more extensive.

The pardon paperwork is, it's no joke yeah it's much more extensive so we're working on that we've tabled it temporarily to get the gun rights paperwork done get it sent off and then we're going to get back on the pardon paperwork

and then we're same thing casting

out

you know fishing lines whatever to try to get it in front of the president

so that's that's where we're at

hoping that my service to the country is going to buy the goodwill to evade, you know, hopefully get a pardon.

I got somebody I want to connect you with, or try to connect you with.

Okay.

That might be able to help.

I appreciate it, dude.

More than I can say.

All I can do is ask.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

I don't want to say his name on here.

Yeah, no problem.

But

he's pretty high up there, and he's definitely got a lead in there.

Yeah, that's it in a nutshell.

It's on me.

I have to take it.

You know,

I'm to blame.

What are you potentially facing?

You know, we don't know.

I mean, potentially five years and a million-dollar fine or whatever, but there's so many variables to it.

I've asked my attorney that countless times.

Jerry Rooter is my attorney, Jerry with a G, Rooter with a T out of Baltimore.

But he, he, I've asked him, he goes, Larry, there are way too many variables to deal with here to be able to accurately tell you that.

So

I'm preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.

So the worst will be five years and a million dollars-ish.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I've really thought it through and God only knows.

And he just legitimately tells me, he goes, because I've asked him more than once, Jerry, what do you really think I'm facing here?

He goes, I'm telling you, Larry, there's just so many variables.

We really cannot get a handle on where this is going to go for you.

Damn, man.

So, I mean, he was right before.

He said,

my guess is you will not be sentenced in 2024.

It'll be 2025 before you're sentenced.

Damn.

And now Trump getting in office, that throws everything up in the air because now

the people that would probably be coming after me from the Biden administration or the Biden appointees are gone.

Yeah.

So now, you know, Trump getting in just changes everything, brings a pardon on the table, brings getting my gun rights on the table.

What did you import?

Did you say that already?

Illegal importation of a firearm.

What was it?

Basically,

I doctored, for lack of a better term, I conspired with people to doctor up paperwork.

Now, I'm just being, you know, I'm kind of winging it here.

I get it.

Doctored up paperwork to bring in different guns for my collection.

It wasn't for, you know, to sell them to the cartel or MS-13 or nothing.

It was for my collection.

It's like I told you, I fed this demon over here.

Addicted to guns.

Addicted to guns.

Well, how many guns did you have?

Oh, at the peak, 700, or excuse me, 650.

650?

Yeah.

Where the hell do you put them all?

Oh, dude.

Those you just got stacks of them.

I had two rooms this size full.

Holy shit, man.

650.

Do you shoot them all?

No.

What was your most prized FG-42.

What is that?

World War II German paratrooper rifle.

Damn.

Yeah, Folstrumeger-Gevere, 42.

FG-42.

Yeah, that was my most prized.

Made approximately 6,000 of them during the war.

Uber rare.

Wow.

Uber rare worth the price of a

nice house.

Damn.

Yeah.

FG-42.

I had a type 1 and a type 2.

There are two different types.

Wow.

I had a type 1 and a type 2, FG-42.

Now,

sold off a lot of the collection after I got cancer.

My wife said, hey,

what if you die from cancer and all this stuff gets dumped in my lap?

What am I going to do?

And I'm like, you know what?

She's got a point.

Because like my buddy Ken Hackthorne said, you will always get more for your guns when you're alive than when you're dead.

You know, I took that to heart.

So I sold off,

oh, man,

80%,

75%,

you know, 60, 75% of my collection.

I sold it off in order to put money in the bank for the family in case I died from cancer.

Where'd you get cancer?

I'm confident from the unit.

I got time in the Army.

I'm confident.

Can't prove it.

There's been so many guys

from the unit

that have had cancer, died from cancer.

Yeah.

A lot.

Scares the hell out of me, man.

It's like every day, you know, I got another buddy or a friend of a friend or it's just every day, man, somebody else is getting cancer.

And with

war vets, I mean, it's just, you don't even know where the shit comes from.

It's just all these weird cancers keep popping up.

I interviewed a friend of mine, Chris Fettis,

and he was saying that he thinks that,

or not that he thinks, there's been some studies that say that it came from the jammers, the, you know, for jamming frequencies for the IEDs and shit.

And,

I mean, it's just, I just got the screening a couple weeks ago.

Oh, yeah.

Scared the shit out of me.

I'm cancer-free right now.

But,

but, yeah, the anticipation for that was.

So what did you get?

Follicular lymphoma.

What is that?

Basically a blood disease.

And honestly, though, it's like a friend of mine said, if you're going to, he had leukemia.

But he said, if you're going to have a cancer,

you got one that you should, you know, to have.

Obviously, you don't want cancer, needless to say.

But if you're going to have a cancer, you got one of the ones that have very treatable.

Very treatable.

You good now?

Oh, yeah.

In remission.

Like my doc said, I had fantastic cancer doc, in Charlotte, fantastic,

you know, Novant healthcare services.

I mean, just fantastic care.

And he told me,

the lymphoma you have is treatable, not curable.

He goes, it will eventually come back.

He goes, but if it does, we treat it again.

And he goes,

That might be five years.

It might be 20 years.

You never know.

It may never come back.

You may end up taking it to the grave.

But he said it's very treatable.

It's not curable.

It's treatable.

And he said, it's like cockroaches.

And

now

you have cockroaches.

You turn on the light in the room.

They start to scatter.

You might kill a bunch of them, but you're not going to kill them all.

And he goes, and that's what it's like with follicular lymphoma.

Well, I'm happy to hear you're doing better, man.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Total remission.

You know, I had stem cell transplant.

And here's the great thing.

It completely wipes out your immune system.

I mean, completely, as if you're a newborn baby.

I had to have all my immunizations from when I was a little baby up till now.

Had them re, yes.

Dude, I got over my needle phobia.

I remember having six shots in one day.

I mean, you name it.

Measles, mumps, the whole nine yards.

Did you go out of country for the stem cell?

No.

It was here.

yeah it was in charlotte at the novont um facility no mount cancer facility stuff's working wonders for people man oh dude magic i really

my cancer wasn't that big of a deal i had i got nauseous i'm really not that i mean i lost weight fatigue but it really there wasn't really any pain

I mean, I mean, I hate to say it, but it really just wasn't that big of a deal.

Well, that's a good thing.

You know?

And you're married?

Yeah.

Man, I didn't see.

I've been the world's worst dad, the world's worst husband.

I mean,

straight up.

Why do you say that?

I just neglected the wife.

Should have never,

I mean, I've just done her wrong.

I really have.

I've just been, I haven't been a good father to my son.

My dad was very standoffish.

I've been the same way to my son.

I just haven't been a good, to be brutally honest, brutally honest, I have not been a good husband or a good, or a good father.

Are you improving?

I'm trying to.

How old is your son?

22.

And he's had some real struggles.

And, you know, not all my fault, but definitely I've contributed to that.

So I'm trying to improve and be better.

But if I had to, you know.

Big chink in the armor is I have not been the husband or the father I should have been.

I can't sit here and lie to you.

I'm not going to lie to you.

That's why we brought up the legal stuff.

I'm not going to bullshit you.

You know what I mean?

What would you say to your son right now?

I love him and I really want him to do better.

He's more on the right track now than he's been for a long time.

He's had some real personal struggles, but he's on the right track now.

I'm finishing college and whatnot.

Just tell him I love him and I want him to continue on the same path he's on now

and keep the faith.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he's a good kid.

He's real smart.

Real smart.

He just had some real struggles.

And like I said, not all my fault, but I've definitely contributed to it.

Not by it, by not being the dad I should have been.

You know, I should be.

And you're still married?

Yeah, still married.

It's been real rocky.

You got everything you want to say to your wife?

Yeah, I love her, and I apologize for being the, you know, the improper, shitty husband.

that I, you know, I should have been.

She deserved 100 times better than what I've been, for sure.

I provided her a good lifestyle.

She lives very well, but you know, that doesn't compensate for not being there emotionally, not being there supporting her from that point of view.

So, yeah, she lives very well, drives nice cars, lives in a nice house, but

there's a big void on the other end of that that I've not filled.

How come you don't wear a ring?

We're kind of on the outs right now.

Sorry to hear that.

Well, I appreciate it.

Yeah, we're kind of on the outs.

And I'm not a big ring guy.

I've never been a big ring.

I didn't, even when we were getting along, I didn't always wear it.

I just never, you know, that's why I wear this unit ring.

But

God knows when I'll wear it again.

What's the story behind the unit ring?

Well,

if you're in the unit and you basically have served, you know, honorably, you get the opportunity to buy your own ring.

If I remember correctly, it was 300 bucks.

I could be way off.

But yeah, you can say, hey, you can go buy your own unit ring.

And then you set the stone color and then, you know, platinum or whatever you want.

You get gold.

And there's a few different flavors.

It's the kind of like a, you know, a high school ring or a college ring is really what it is.

And then you set your dates in terms of when you came in and when you left.

Mine's 88 to 03.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

And

uber rare.

Uber rare.

we me and scott my buddy who came up here with me we're trying to find it on the internet and you can't even find a picture of one that's cool they're that rare your guys got a pick

your oh yeah your crew got a pick of it oh yeah they're they uh

they love time pieces and and and sentimental stuff man they love that stuff everybody does oh yeah 100

Everybody's, I never envisioned you to be a ring knocker.

No, I'm not.

Just kidding, man.

That's the Academy, guys.

Now, Tom didn't have one, or did he not bring one, I guess, or did you say he didn't?

Man, he may have had one, but he didn't tell me what it was.

I don't know.

I wasn't paying attention.

Well, I purposely wore it so you could check it out because I knew you'd appreciate it.

I do.

I purposely wore it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Larry.

We're wrapping up the interview, but I got one thing, and

I wanted to wait until the end to ask this.

Okay.

But

I've got a patreon account and patreon's it's a subscription service that we have i started at the very beginning when i was doing firearms training and it's growing into like this

really fucking amazing community and um

they're the reason i'm here and the reason you're here and uh so one of the things i do is i um offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question yeah and so this is from

eric alger

what do you want the next generation of warfighters to learn from your story?

Oh, man, that's a good question.

I would say, if anything,

try to always think outside the box.

And we didn't necessarily hit directly on that in our interview, but there was a lot of elements of that that we talked about.

Try to always, don't get set.

And I learned that from Elden Bargwell.

I've learned that from other guys.

Don't get set in your ways to the point where you no longer think out of the box.

And Delta, to their credit, that's kind of a motto they've always lived by.

Yeah.

You know, don't, you know,

you know.

Try not to get locked into one particular thing.

Try to always think out of the box.

Man, that's the way I lived my life, not just in that type of community, but just throughout my entire life and business and everything is not only think outside of the box, but what fucking box?

Yeah.

There is no.

No, it is.

That's right.

What box?

But, and if you don't mind, I'd like to add something, man.

Yeah.

Because when I think of your stories and your experiences in Delta,

contingency planning.

Boy, ain't that the truth?

Contingency, contingency, contingencies.

And

you could never have too many of them.

No, you can't.

Anticipate the worst

because it's probably going to happen.

Well, Larry, I wish you the best of luck and

your lost stuff.

I appreciate it.

I hope.

I'll be praying for you, man.

Thanks, man.

I definitely appreciate it.

And probably even more importantly than that, I just wish you the best of luck with your family.

I hope everything works out.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

And I hope you reach out.

Yeah, I need to come clean on that.

I could have just sat here and, oh, yeah, everything's fine, but I'm not going to do that.

I mean, you brought me up here as a guest.

I greatly appreciate it.

I've had a great time talking to you, fantastic time.

Last thing I'm going to do is bullshit you and lie to your face.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Larry.

It was an honor to interview you, man.

Hey, thank you, bro.

I greatly appreciate it.

Fantastic time.

Fantastic.

Cheers.

Thanks, brother.

Thank you.

I am Michael Rosenbaum.

I am Tom Welling.

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